Journal of Geography and Regional Development
Year:2010 | Volume:- | Issue:13|Papers Count:16

There are three important aspects of drought, which have to be assessed: intensity, duration and extent. Most of authentic world indexes, such as Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), Percent of Normal (PN), deciles and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) were designed to clarify intensity and duration of drought. Geographical Information System (GIS) is a very useful tool to determine drought's extent and zoning the iso-intensity regions. In this investigation, PN index was used for zoning drought's intensity in Khorasan Razavi Province. Also long-term time series were used to assess and calculate drought's effects on water resources. Based on PN zoning maps, it can be concluded that more than half of case study's area was faced drought in 32-40% of investigation periods. Also yearly precipitation in different return period's maps shows hardest situation in Torbat-heidarieh, Gonabad, Khaf and Kashmar. Results of time series showed that considerable rainfall of autumn and winter of 1385 did not have any important influence on water resources in Khorasan Razavi Province and therefore could not compensate this region's drought for more than one year period and special management is needed to remove damages.

Because of the increasing importance of water in several dimensions of human life specially in the last 50 years, most of the countries including Iran have allocated considerable investment and programming to regulate and control water by the use of engineering structures specially dams. Initiation of Kardeh Dam (Mashhad) in 1367 and Beedvaz Dam (Esferayen) in 1382 in line with this very policy. A major issue which have rarely received attention from researchers is the consequence of the implementation of such projects and evaluating their social, economical, and environmental effects. This paper aims to fill this gap. Taking a descriptive-analytic approach and using survey and comparative studies on new data and evidence related to the time before the construction of these dams and the attitude of people who use the water of these dams, research evaluates the effects of the construction and use of the dams. The results show negative effects regarding the size of cultivated agricultural lands and economical, social and environmental effects in the vicinity of Kardeh Dam. In the case of Beedvaz dam, a limited improvement in the economical and environmental conditions was observed because all the water coming from this dam was allocated to agricultural purposes. Another important finding was that more than 80% of the users are not satisfied with the state management of these dams and the way their water is distributed in the vicinity. This shows that taking a participatory approach to the use and management of these dams seems unavoidable.

Investigating the current conditions and problems associated with the expansions of areas and sustainable development in cities have recently received more attention in the urban planning culture, however, it has not received enough attention yet in Iran. The aim of this paper is to identify sustainable and unsustainable areas in Ilam and to identify the weak and strong points in urban areas based on sustainable development indices. To have a good command and comprehensive knowledge of existing theories, different methods such as historical, descriptive, analytical and case study were used. For data analysis, HDI, Factor analysis and coefficient of Variation were utilized. In sum, from 14 urban areas, non was sustainable, two of them were semi-sustainable and the other 12 areas were unsustainable. In unsustainable areas, one will see the lack of facilities and the existing facilities don’t match the increasing population of this area, these problems increase the unsustainablity of the area. Therefore to achieve sustainable development in all these urban areas, we should have enough knowledge and information about dimension of sustainable areas and weak and strong points of these areas so that we will be able to enhance the strong points and remove the weak ones, otherwise not only the sustainable areas will not be enhanced but also their sustainability will decrease gradually and the unsustainable areas will remain unsustainable.

Like most of the societies specially the ones in which the growth of urbanism has been considerable in the past two decades, the issue of dwelling is very important in Iran. Problems of dwelling in Iran can be observed by looking at the rapid increase in the cost dwelling units and rent fees. But because economical and political different factors affect the cost of the dwelling units, the increase cannot be taken as the mere cause for dwelling issues. Because Qeshm has suitable economical and touristic conditions, cost of dwelling and field there is very high. Given the growth rate of 1.4 for economical development in dwelling business in this city, this was menat to investigate factors affecting the use of land use in residential areas using statistical techniqus of AHP and TOPSIS. The result show that among these factors (economical, social, environmental and cultural) economical factor have the maximum influence on land use in the residential that among these factors in Qeshm, occupation and income had the highest influence.

One cannot emphasize the importance of the city net in political and economical geography, and generally in civil dynamicity. Insofar as the city net is the outcome and the cause of many contemporary citizenship phenomena, both from the spatial point of view i.e. the location and the distribution of different cities (size, population etc.) and from the economic point of view i.e. the trade system of the cities on the basis of their basic functions, the familiarity with this net and its changes in an area can shed light on many key issues. Programming according to the civil and functional system and its hierarchy plays a significant role in providing services and exchanges both inter- and intra- zonal, decentralization, removing present inequalities, and the overall systematic development of the spatial structures of the zone. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the city net in Bushehr Province, using models such as city concentration, rank-size, adjusted rank-size, Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient, Entropy coefficient and Elasticiablity coefficient. This research is a functional-developmental one and its methodology is descriptive, and analytical-causal. Excel and GIS softwares were used for qualitative and quantitative analyses. The findings show that the spatial distribution of the quantity of the cities in Bushehr Province has been half-balanced from 1956 to 2006. In 2006, it has reached the most balanced situation during the past six decades. Furthermore, the most balanced spatial distribution of the population in cities of Bushehr Province dates back to 1987, while the worst is in 1956. This process has decreased to about 0.2 in 2006 in comparison with 1996 which means the distribution of the facilities and equipments in this province is not appropriate. To sum up, the overall spatial distribution of the population in the cities of Bushehr Province has been half-balanced.

To determine regionalization of climate in Yazd province, 42 climate parameters were selected from climatology and synoptic stations of the study area and a 15×15 kilometers geographical network was considered to investigate the selected elements in the study area. The elements were studied in each cells knot using krigging method. Reduction of data matrix using factor analysis, varimax rotation, and climate zoning by cluster analysis and ward method were the next steps of the research. The results indicated that 5 factors accounted for 92.83 percent of the variation. These factors included precipitation, thermal temperature, dusty, wind and humidity, which explained 34.70, 32.74, 11.92, 7.08, and 6.39 percent of variation respectively. The results of hierarchical method of cluster showed that Yazd province with 131575 km2 has 6 different zonations including arid and cold, arid and dusty, semi arid and cold, very arid and warm, very arid and windy climes.

Many urban specialists in the information and globalization era are concerned with conservation of urban values and transforming them into urban identities. Still denying the past is implied in many proposed urban development plans. They seek urban values merely in the physical fabric of the city not in other things. Urban values and identities play a crucially important role in enforcement and promotion of local and national cultural heritage in the globalization period. Many of these urban values in Mashhad face destruction as a result of renovation activities. This research has two purposes. The first purpose is to explain the meaning, hierarchy and significance of values in forming urban identity by showing some examples from other countries (photos), and the second purpose is to identify valuable urban areas in Mashhad. To achieve this purpose a stratified sampling survey was conducted including 412 filled questionnaires from three groups (tourists: 104, peoples, business: 199 peoples and other civilian: 109). The results show that there are 53 valuable urban areas in three dispersed patterns including: axle or linear pattern (12), complex pattern (19) and point pattern (22). Also valuable areas are divided into eight sub-groups and were ranked according to religious, touristic, business and historical indices. Locations such as the Holy Shrine from religious aspect, Torqabe from touristic aspect, Reza Bazaar from business aspect Ferdowsi tomb from historical aspect were identified as the most valuable areas in the city. Finally the relationship between attitudes of different sub-groups about priority of valuable areas was investigated using ANOVA. The results show that there is a significant deference between attitudes of three sub-groups on eight valuable areas. However, these sub-groups do have some common valuable features including touristic and religious values. The priority of these features must be taken into consideration in the future activities. Also there are other valuable areas in Mashhad which are ignored and need to be investigated using others methods in further research projects.

Much of the world’s population has been settled on the coastal plains and in areas adjacent to rivers. Thus studying changes in river patterns for determining their degree of stability is important. In this project the deltas on coastal plain in northern parts of the Hormoz Strait are studied to identify changes (in time and place) in the river beds. To this aim, after analyzing the rivers’ morphology, the changes in river patterns have been analyzed. First the morphometry of delta environment was investigated while considering the shape and the other main factors which control the morphometry of the river. At the second stage the data were imported to GIS software to identify the change patterns in different places and times in a period of 50 years. Satellite data, field survey, map for comparison, and the existing cross-sectional changes of time and place were used. Data-hydraulic flow and channel geometry parameters have been used for analyzing the causes and the changes. The results show that changes in pattern and river bed evolution followed the meandering of rivers and increased towards the lower parts of the coastal plain. This is directly affected by changes in sediment texture, reduction of the level of delta slope toward downstream and flooding state of rivers. Management and setting privacy control and restoration of waterways especially at the time of flood are among the most effective solutions for stabilization of river channels.

Citizen participation in social affaires has been considered as the major element in studies on development during the last decade. Most of the population in Iran live in small cities. In this paper 3 small cities Galeh Daran, in Fars Province, Varzaneh in Esfehan province with and Hidege in Zanjan province have been selected as the sample. In this paper first a theoretical framework is drawn up through documental and librarian survey and using valid Persian and Latin sources, then the results of a relevant questionnaire are discussed. The sample included 255 citizens aged 16. With regard to results of this questionnaire it’s been clarified that on mental aspect, desire for partnership is very strong, there is also a very good vision toward participation in these cities. In explicit aspect of participation through people’s participation elements in organizations and urban institutes, attending in last elections and contribute with relations have been measured and found to be at a low level. Based on the results of correlation analysis applied on mental participation as the independent variable and people’s participation, it can be argued that there is meaningful relationship between these two variables, the necessary conditions for participation in city management in the three cities was also found to be very high.

The daily increase in the number of passengers and air travels and the rapid changes happening in air commuting have created a series of issues for locating the airportsn, such issues need to be addressed by appropriate programming and applying the available knowledge about airports and aviation techniques. Given the special conditions required for the location of airports and the considerable space they need adjacent to the cities, for building them, high investment and accurate programming is necessary. Issues such as economical, social, political, environmental conditions, natural position, geological and meteorological features of the area, and its relevance to other needs and functions have to be taken into account. In this paper, beside discussing and pursuing specific indices for locating airports, the case of Esfahan airport using SWOT strategic model is investigated. The results indicated 25 strong point (including 14 sources of internal power and 11 opportunities) and weak points (including 8 sources of internal weakness and 10 threats) for this airport. The results also indicate that standard indices for Esfahan Beheshti airport are regarded in most cases and on the whole the advantages of this airport overshadow its limitations.

Given the recent changes in rural life patterns, the issue of environmental pollution has taken a more serious form, and rural settlement pollution needs to be surveyed. In the present study, this issue has been studied in the vicinity of Sabzevar using macro data and the data obtained from time series. The results showed that pollution index (BOD5) will increase from 212.3 ton in 2006 to 321.7 ton in 2026. The results also showed that amount of rural garbage will increase with growth the rate of 1.15% into 2945.5 ton in 2026. It was also found that total pollution index (BOD5) of livestock activity is equal to1969 ton per year and with the growth rate of 1% will have been into 2925.6 ton in 2026. With regards to the results, a model ensuring the reduction of Sabzevar water pollution is proposed for rural regions.

It is a very short time that the Quaternaries period in Geology and physical Geography's knowledge has occupied a very important place. During this period, the earth has suffered consecutive freezing that has been accompanied by tides and alternate erosion and sedimentation. Sedimentary successions have recorded valuable evidence of changes with very accurate details. The study of these sediments has been the main way of the past event of earth's new technology such as fixing the snowline depression, the boundary of extension and also, the study of region changes of that period. Recently, a series of studies have been done and reported in western Alborz. In a detailed scale, however, there is no word of boundaries of glacial extension, the existence of temperature in the period of Quaternaries and snowline depression. To fill this gap, the cirque-floor altitude is the best method for reconstruction of the Wurm snowline. This research is a descriptive survey. The research results prove that siyalan glacier tongue has a maximum height of 1200 m and exactly up to the present location of Assal Mahaleh village. The altitude of old snowline was 2100 m and the average of temperature in the highest cirque at present in this region is -4oC and the forms such as glacier cirques, drifts and wurm region changes in this zone are among the most important phenomena related to the Wurm climate changes.

Oriental sore and tuberculosis are considered the main therapeutic and hygienic problems in developing countries such as Iran. Dispersion rate of these diseases are not equal in Iran. The greatest rate of dispersion of oriental sore in Iran is related to northeast of the country and Khorasan Razavi has been at the sixth level in 2008 with 5447 affected among all provinces. Of all the people affected by oriental sore in Khorasan Razavi, 55.22 percent were found in Mashhad indicating it is considered as a very risky region regarding oriental sore in Khorasan Razavi. Dispersion rate of the disease is not the same across different areas in Mashhad, regions of Abobargh, Shahrak Abozar, Khaje Rabi and Hojat account for 43/35 of all affected by oriental sore. Dispersion of tuberculosis across provinces of Iran is not the same either, Khorasan Razavi is recognized as a risky region regarding this disease as well. The main factors increasing tuberculosis in this province are believed to be proximity with Afghanistan and plenty of Afghan immigrants and their traffic in the province especially in Mashhad, given that Afghanistan is one of the main focuses of tuberculosis in the world. Out of all people who are affected by tuberculosis in Khorasan Razavi in 2008, 1207 of them (i.e. 64.29 percent) were reported in Mashhad. Dispersion rate in Mashad is different such that regions of Golshahr, Emam Reza, Motahari and Emam Hassan Mojtaba account for 31.06 of all patients affected by tuberculosis.