Assessment of watershed management projects

Natural resource degradation especially soil erosion is one of the most important problems all over the world especially in Iran. Although, many projects in Iran have been conducted over several decades including watershed and range management projects. But, after more than 40 years, it seems that these projects could not reach to their objectives, because of increasing amount of the degradation and erosion processes. Therefore, it is necessary to assess these projects to recognize the reason of their failure. The main purpose of this research was to assess watershed management projects from their first stage (study&design) towards final stages (after implementation) to introduce a regional assessment model for the study area located in northern Iran in Golestan province. In this research, a qualitative model was used and the projects are given scores using seven groups of indices, other sub-indices and also questionaries. Then, obtained scores determines condition of project category including very weak, weak, moderate, fair and excellent. The result of this research shows that total obtained scores using this model for the studied project in the Ramian watershed is 33. This obtained score shows that condition of the project from its study and design to implementation and the next stages are classified in weak category. Thus, the project performance is weak in general.