JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

In the recent decades, dams have paradoxically been considered as a constraint and or a driving force of surface water conservation. On the other hand, dams have had a number of socio-economic and environmental impacts, the main reason for conducting the current case study on Shah-Qasem Dam in Yasouj, Iran, was to employ the survey field research through a questionnaire to assess the rural peoples’ viewpoint; this was done in four villages of the Southern Sar’roud County. Based on the (Cochran) formula, 192 individuals were relatively selected from each village. According to the findings, the most important impact of the dam was mainly economical (the average impact was between 2.37 and 3.7), whereas the least one was environmental (the average impact was between 1.81 and 3.54). Also, the results of the hypotheses’ analyses by means of 2 and Wilcoxon showed the following results: rise of the villages’ income, increase of the cultivated farms, increase in the employed individuals, enhancement of the cultivated crops, the regions production rising, improved tourism, lack of people’s participation in the decision making process, and reaming of the same plant varieties in the area, as compared with the pre-dam era. It is worth considering, however, that based on the statistical population used, this study was concerned mainly with the short benefits of the dam, rather than its long-term destructive ones.