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Abstract

Past experiences revealed a crucial fact that development of human activities must be carried out in a sound manner. Increasing the availability of terrestrial ecosystems of the southern coast of the Caspian Sea has brought an extensive development, so that the outcomes of the past developments endangered the health of the environment. In general, considering the rapid increasing growth of population, there is no possibility to stagnate or encounter the fast development induced by the incremental population increases. In present research, terrestrial ecosystems of the southern coast of the Caspian Sea have been classified on the basis of ecological sustainability and extent of ecological susceptibility. Using the object-oriented method in determination of ecological susceptibility and interaction analysis method, land classification of the study area has been carried out to define the sustainable and also susceptible areas to human activities in subwatershed scale in the northern part of Iran. Based on the findings of this research about 17.84 percent of the study area have been determined as resistant (class 2), 53.36% medium (class 3), 16.62% sensitive (class 4) and 12.18% highly sensitive (class 5). No highly resistant ecosystems (class i3 have been found throughout the study area. The results showed that the study area is not prone for development, considering ecological susceptibility of its terrestrial ecosystems, in spite of its abundant ecological resources.

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