An application of mathematical models to select the optimal alternative for an integral plan to desertification and erosion control (Chaco Area – Salta Province – Argentina)

Abstract

Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision. These decisions are difficult because the complexity of the system or because of determining the optimal situation or behaviour. This work will illustrate how MCDA is applied in practice to a complex problem to resolve such us soil erosion and degradation. Desertification is a global problem and recently it has been studied in several forums as ONU that literally says: <i>"Desertification has a very high incidence in the environmental and food security, socioeconomic stability and world sustained development"</i>. Desertification is the soil quality loss and one of FAO's most important preoccupations as hunger in the world is increasing. Multiple factors are involved of diverse nature related to: natural phenomena (water and wind erosion), human activities linked to soil and water management, and others not related to the former. In the whole world this problem exists, but its effects and solutions are different. It is necessary to take into account economical, environmental, cultural and sociological criteria. A multi-criteria model to select among different alternatives to prepare an integral plan to ameliorate or/and solve this problem in each area has been elaborated taking in account eight criteria and five alternatives. Six sub zones have been established following previous studies and in each one the initial matrix and weights have been defined to apply on different criteria. Three multicriteria decision methods have been used for the different sub zones: ELECTRE, PROMETHEE and AHP. The results show a high level of consistency among the three different multicriteria methods despite the complexity of the system studied. The methods are fully described for La Estrella sub zone, indicating election of weights, Initial Matrixes, algorithms used for PROMETHEE, and the Graph of Expert Choice showing the AHP results. A brief schema of the actions recommended for each of the six different sub zones is discussed

Evaluation of Combating Desertification Alternatives Using Promethee Model

“…Translating Reality (ELECTRE), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and PROMETHEE models in his research in order to select optimal alternatives for providing an integrated plan for erosion and desertification control (Grau et al, 2010). His study results indicated high-performance of these models in providing optimal alternatives for de-desertification, and the results were the same despite the use of complex methods in each model.…”

Evolución de los enfoques en desertificación: una revisión de 170 estudios de casos

“…En este contexto, han sido diversos los organismos y autores que han identificado y citado una serie de ellos, así como también metodologías en relación con la evaluación y seguimiento de la desertificación, como lo son el suelo, la vegetación y el agua, aspectos climáticos, geomorfológicos y socio-económicos. Entre ellos se pueden citar los siguientes trabajos: Mabbutt (1986), Middleton y Thomas (1992), Fan-e-ISSN 2340-0129 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30827/cuadgeo.v57i2.5530 Brandt y Thornes (1996), Sharma (1998), (Rubio y Bochet (1998), López Bermúdez y Romero Díaz (1998), López Bermúdez (1999), Kosmas et al (1999), López Bermúdez y González Barbera (2000), Imeson y Cammeraat (2000), Brandt, et al (2003), Grau et al (2010), Salvati y Bajocco (2011), Kairis et al (2014) y Brandt y Geeson (2015. Asimismo, destacan las propuestas metodológicas de Abraham et al (2006), Reynolds et al (2007), Reed et al (2011), Vogt et al (2011) y Armon (2015.…”

Assessment of combating-desertification strategies using the linear assignment method

“…Therefore, it has been applied in various fields of science (Bernardo and Blin, 1977). Some of these studies include assessing environmental sustainability (Hosseinzadeh et al, 2011), assessing and ranking risks (Sayadi et al, 2011), monitoring sensitivity of desertification (Symeonakis et al, 2014), footprint of research in desertification management (Miao et al, 2015), characterization and interaction of driving factors in desertification (Xu and Zhang, 2014), identifying susceptible areas toward desertification (Vieira et al, 2015), evaluation of soil fertility in the succession of karst rocky desertification (Xie et al, 2014), assessing environmental sensitivity of areas toward desertification (Sobhand and Khosravi, 2015), financial assessment of companies (Mohammadi, 2011), assessing strategies of water supply (Mianabadi and Afshar, 2008), zoning watersheds (Ramesht and Arabameri, 2012), assigning water resources in order to minimize the energy consumption (Joung et al, 2012), programming of robots (Ji et al, 1992), programming the dispatch of helicopters in emergency missions (Celi, 2007) and so on and so forth.…”