Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
Land use planning and determination of developmental priorities based on regional conditions and characteristics are considered as one of the major aspects of planning on a regional scale. One approach in this field is the determination of land use types. The common point in all applied methods of ecological potential assessment is to consider development as the assessment goal in the research process. This occurs when in the allocation of types of uses under equal condition, different types of development can be studied and the most appropriate one selected according to conditions. Therefore, this study tries to apply a model which enables the assessment of land use with different types of development. Since taking into account all types of development simultaneously causes prioritization conflicts (one or more types of development might have the same priority level at one point when different developmental priorities overlap), the major challenge would be to resolve the inter-developmental conflicts. Therefore, the proposed model must be able to resolve such spatial conflict. This study, based on conducted research on assessment of ecological potential and using multi-objective assessment methods, evaluates the ecological potential of Noushahr County in four types of urban, agricultural, industrial, and natural development using a new concept known as “verbal logic”. It tends to offer an integral model for simultaneous analysis of different types of development. On this basis, the method employed in this study has two main sections: the first section deals with ecological assessment based on multi- objective assessment model. In this section, a model of appropriate locations for all the four developments is distinctively identified which results in the recommendation of location priorities for each type of land use development. In the second section, the verbal logic is used to present the integral prioritization areas which cover all the priorities simultaneously. The logic combines the priorities of all types of development employing quantitative approaches and ultimately resolves the conflicts arising from overlapping of priorities of different development types using the conditional rules obtained from the major goal of assessment. On this basis, this model offers priority zoning of integral land capacity in regards to developmental priorities; the major goal of assessment is" zoning the land for optimum allocation of agricultural, urban, and industrial development while protecting environmental values". The model results demonstrate that in integral assessment of a variety of development, only 1% of the region is not suffering inter-developmental conflict while a large part of the region is suffering conflict between assessment priorities of two or more types of development. Only 1 % of all conflict types in the region is dedicated to top priority conflicts in all development types. Nearly 73% of conflicts are devoted to the conflict amongst the three lower priorities. Taking into consideration that the decision-making process of the model is based on the major goal of assessment, the model allocates the desired land to natural development and prevents the expansion of other developments in these areas to resolve the conflict among all priorities. Meanwhile, the study of spatial distribution of various developments in the city and its comparison with land use show that much of the central and southern parts are dedicated to natural development as a first priority while the industrial, urban and agricultural developments are largely linked to each other and are located in the central and northern parts of the city mostly near lowlands at low altitudes.
Keywords
- Integral pattern of assessment
- Land Use Allocation
- verbal logic
- ecological potential assessment
- Noushahr
Main Subjects
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