In sustainable watershed management, research and study about environmental factors are important

issues. It is because such studies often produce some valuable data used to select the proper locations for

spatial arrangement of rural settlements. Every human activity in natural system must be based on knowledge,

otherwise it would cause some disruptions in phenomena balance and widely changes the function

of the natural phenomena. The aim of this study is to identify the role of environmental factors in spatial

arrangement of rural settlements of Mahabad watershed to reduce the various natural accidents and prevent

the vulnerability of rural people. Research method in addition to literature review is based on locally

and field research and questionnaire techniques.

In this research, some environmental factors such as slope classes, elevation, distance from fault and

landslide were considered as independent variables and rural settlement distribution was defined as

depended variable. ILWIS and GIS software and SPSS as statistical software were used to analyze data.

The results showed that landslide and creeping not only cause some damages on man- made environments

but also lead to some degradation, erosion and environmental poverties in rural regions. In this relationship,

mountain location of Mahabad watershed affects deeply on this problem. Two factors such as altitude

and slope act as limiting factors in spatial arrangement. The results showed that various faults locally folding

generated from tectonics, cause the great amount of quakes that made study region to be hazardous.