Hossein Rafieemehr; Lotfali Kozegarkaleji
Abstract
Introduction: Groundwater is considered the most important source for various uses in arid and semi-arid regions. Thus, evaluating the effects of human activities such as changes in land use/cover on groundwater resources plays a vital role in sustainable water management and, therefore, spatial planning. ...
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Introduction: Groundwater is considered the most important source for various uses in arid and semi-arid regions. Thus, evaluating the effects of human activities such as changes in land use/cover on groundwater resources plays a vital role in sustainable water management and, therefore, spatial planning. Accordingly, the need to integrate land use planning and water resources management is widely emphasized. In addition, perceiving the spatio-temporal relationship between land use changes and groundwater resources is crucial for the sustainable management of the plains in Iran. The present study aimed to assess this relationship in the Hamedan-Bahar Plain.Material and methods: In the study, the land use maps of 1989, 1997, 2005, 2013, and 2018 were prepared from Landsat satellite images, categorized, and evaluated with respect to accuracy. Further, six uses including irrigated and dry agricultural lands, rangelands and elevations, man-made areas, gardens, and surface water resources were extracted and classified. Furthermore, the distribution maps for groundwater depth were prepared through kriging for five years based on the piezometric data. Finally, the correlation and relationship between land use changes and groundwater depth fluctuations were determined by the REGRESS method.Results and discussion: The land use maps demonstrated an increase in the share of rangelands and elevations (9.68% in 1989 to 40.85% in 2018) and their conversion to dry agricultural lands. Additionally, the share of man-made and irrigated agricultural lands increased from 1.27 to 2.45% and 5.32 to 6.25% during the timespan, respectively. The trend of changes in groundwater level was more evident in the flatbed of the plain, in which groundwater level was less than 1800 m and important habitats and irrigated agricultural lands were available. In addition, the average annual depletion of groundwater level for a 29-year time span was 0.91 m, and the minimum and maximum of the R–value related to five study periods was obtained 0.36 and 0.40 based on the REGRESS method, respectively. Further, the role of managerial factors should be considered as well as the relative relationship between groundwater level changes and land use. Furthermore, the correlation between the decrease in groundwater level and land use in each period relatively increased compared to the previous one by representing an R-value of 0.40 during 1989-2018, which can explain almost 16.2% of their changes. Due to the water resource scarcity, land use should be planned based on the scale, power, and extent of plains and watersheds in order to attain a sustainable regional water system.Conclusion: The results of the study can play an important role in understanding the importance of groundwater resources and emphasize the necessity of paying more attention to the effects and changes of land use on groundwater in arid and semi-arid regions. Additionally, the results indicated the sensitivity of groundwater, as the most important water resource in the plains located in arid and semi-arid regions, to the types of variations. Decreasing rangelands, gardens, aqueduct, and surface water-dependent thickets as well as expanding dry and irrigated agricultural and man-made lands are regarded as some of the factors reducing groundwater level in the region. It is worth noting that these factors should be integrally evaluated with respect to other factors such as irrigation systems, water pricing, cultivation pattern, agricultural economics, and an increase in runoff.
lotfali Kozegarkaleji; Arman Moslemi; Mohammad Moradi; Hossein Rafie Mehr; Abbas Amini Zadeh
Volume 16, Issue 3 , October 2018, , Pages 25-44
Abstract
Introduction:
The concept of sustainable development is expanding internationally, and therefore scientists have provided several quantitative and qualitative models for measuring the sustainable development of communities and cities. One of these tools, which attracts more attention in the scientific, ...
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Introduction:
The concept of sustainable development is expanding internationally, and therefore scientists have provided several quantitative and qualitative models for measuring the sustainable development of communities and cities. One of these tools, which attracts more attention in the scientific, political and educational levels, is the assessment of ecological footprint. According to this method, the development is considered unsustainable, when the ecological footprint is higher than the biomass of the region. The ecological footprint approach has been used to measure the sustainability of major cities around the world, such as London, Liverpool, and Paris. The aim of this research is to measure the stability of Tabriz city using the ecological footprint method.
Material and methods:
In this research, descriptive-analytical and quantitative methods were used. The data of this research are mainly quantitative. The population under study included all households living in Tabriz. All data were obtained either from documents (e.g., library and electronic databases) or during field works. In this study, cluster random sampling method was used. The city of Tabriz was categorized into 10 regions based on municipalities and from each region several blocks were selected by sortition. A syncretistic ecological footprint method (a combination of inductive and deductive methods) was used to calculate the ecological footprint in the urban areas. The data necessary for initial analyses were obtained using the country’s statistical data. These include energy consumption, forestry, and its utility.
Results and discussion:
To determine the ecological footprint of Tabriz, data from food, carbon dioxide emissions from transportation, heating from natural gas, water, electricity, and the amount of waste was used. The results show that the city of Tabriz requires an average of 10.86 trillion hectares of land per year for landfill. The required area to absorb the carbon derived from the consumption of the natural gas for each citizen and the whole population is 135 square meters and 20,795 hectares, respectively. The electric power footprint of each citizen of Tabriz is 0.17 hectares. Finally, the water consumption footprint of Tabriz city is 0.020 hectares.
Conclusion:
The results of this study indicate that the ecological footprints of Tabriz city in categories such as food products, transportation, heating from natural gases, water, electricity, and the land needed for waste disposal were 3.30 hectares. Our results suggest that the city of Tabriz relies on a region beyond East Azarbaijan Province to meet its biological needs and sustainability. The amount of consumables in Tabriz shows that food with 2.73 hectares has the highest share compared to other factors. The lowest amount of area needed for waste disposal was 0.77 square meters per person. Since Iran's biocapacity is 0.8 hectares, the ecological footprint of 3.30 hectares in Tabriz city indicates that the city allocated 125.4 times more than its share of the country's biological capacity to itself.
Lotfali Kozegar Kaleji; Arman Moslemi
Volume 13, Issue 3 , October 2015, , Pages 113-124
Abstract
During the recent decades, Tehran County has faced a considerable growth in urbanites. This huge rate of urbanism and subsequently land using for urban habitancy without taking the environment potentials into account has caused serious consequences and has led to environment destruction in Tehran; disorganizing ...
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During the recent decades, Tehran County has faced a considerable growth in urbanites. This huge rate of urbanism and subsequently land using for urban habitancy without taking the environment potentials into account has caused serious consequences and has led to environment destruction in Tehran; disorganizing the balance between the county and the environment. Urban river valleys; as one of the elements of ecologic structure of the cities, can play an efficient role in creating balance between the human made city structure and the nature, but the widespread use has caused a hyper-pressure to the nature, resulting in waste of nature elements like trees, vegetation, water pollution, etc. Thus providing and increasing amusing places, planning natural environments in order to save and revive natural ecosystems and optimum exploitation of them looks totally vital. This paper is of descriptive- analytical and is based on SWOT strategic analysis combinational model and QSPM strategic planning model. This research has explored the process of planning for reviving the natural environment of river valleys in Tehran County and has studied Darakeh river valley as a case study. Performing field studies and reviewing records, this paper provides some strategies in order to plan for reviving the natural environment of this river valley based on facilities and opportunities, limitations and threats. The results of the research shows that the selected QSPM strategies is of the highest priority with an attraction scores of 6.048 among the other five strategies; i.e. selective strategy, protection strategy, reviving strategy, strengthening vegetation strategy and natural settlements strategy.
