Journal of Spatial Planning
Year:2017 | Volume:21 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:10

Applying a methodology relevant to the research question is one of the most fundamental elements of scientific research. Due to the importance of urban development in geographical and urban planning research, the examination of the employed methodologies in a systematic process of scientific inquiry is an inevitable necessity. Hence, critical review of the methodologies of scientific research and evaluation of methodological criteria (the process of doing research) is the purpose of this study. This is a descriptive-analytical research with emphasis on library resources (the PRISMA statement checklist) and expert-based method. The sample of this research includes sixteen theses in geography and urban planning on urban development in state universities of Tehran. Results show that while in experts’ opinion, problem statement, research questions and research methodology are the most important indices, the examined theses had shortcomings in these aspects and paid more attention to resources, goal description and composition skills.

The most appropriate option for flood control in accordance with environmental conditions is watershed management, which has different effects on the hydrological factors, including the amount of surface runoff, sedimentation rate and the permeability in the watershed. The purpose of this study is to simulate and assess changes in surface runoff, sedimentation rate and the permeability using semi-distributed SWAT model in two periods before and after watershed management in the Anbaranchay Watershed. The results showed that the rate of sedimentation in the upstream before watershed management was 22. 14 T/ha and after watershed sediment yield per hectare has decreased to 1. 84T. Also, the simulation results showed that the amount of CN has changed from 75. 68 to 61. 24 in watershed and an increase in permeability and the flow lateral is observed. The SWAT model estimated the evapotranspiration 157. 4 mm to Anbaranchay watershed. Changes in the hydrological cycle in plain sedimentary region has left the greatest impact. It seems that the SWAT model is able to simulate the hydrological cycle processes and geomorphological studies and provide valuable information.

Land market is one of the most important mechanisms that affects the allocation of land to different uses and users. Several studies have investigated the role that market can play in improving the quality of land allocation. Market precondition considers land as a common commodity. However, investigating the nature of land reveals some features that affect market in the land domain. On the other hand, in the analysis of the performance of land market, specific economic features and conditions of the region should also be taken into account. Therefore, the present article aims at analyzing the spatial effects of land market on agricultural economics instability. The data gathered through questionnaires point to the fact that the source of the available capital in the land market of the area is the oil income injected by the government at the national level and border trades at the local level. This is the main difference between the area’ s resource-based economy and a developed capitalist economy. Moreover, through satellite images, the most recently updated version of ArcBruTile. 07, and careful field observation, the transactions for a period of 15 years from 1380 to 1395 were zoned, taking into account the three variables of land fractioning, agricultural land use change, and the construction of illegal second houses. The results of this study indicate that land market has been impacting the instability of agricultural economy.

Areal inequalities are the main challenge to development in many countries. In this context, areal planning is a response to shortcomings and an attempt to eliminate inequalities and to achieve areal integrated development. Aim of this study was to identify and analyze affecting factors in areal integrated development with emphasis on rural-urban linkages in Minoodasht township. This is an applied research in its nature and its method is descriptive-analytic. Three techniques were used in this study: Brainstorming, Delphi and Cross-impact matrices (using Mick Mac software). Using brainstorming and Delphi, 54 factors were identified comprising 11 factors in the agricultural sector, 4 factors in the industrial sector, 13 factors in the service sector, 4 factors in the in the manpower, 4 factors in the infrastructure sector, 3 factors in the education sector, 5 factors in the social sector, 4 factors in the natural resources sector and 6 factors in administration and planning sector. These factors were analyzed using Mick Mac software. Based on the obtained results, the system is unstable and therefore it has five categories of factors. The affecting factors contain twelve factors such as areal integrated management and areal transportation network. The independent factors contain fifteen factors such as oilseeds cultivation, forests and meadows. The planar factors contain sixteen factors such as sports tourism, entrepreneurs and e-commerce. The influenced factors contain eleven factors such as service units and cooperatives. There is not adjustment factor in the system under study.

Remotely sensed data are used to estimate structural parameters in order to reduce the cost and time required for forest inventory. Nowadays, due to the launch of numerous remote sensing systems, a variety of remotely sensed datasets including LiDAR, radar, and optical images are available in different spatial and spectral resolutions. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and compare the performance of these datasets in retrieving structural parameters. Such comparison, however, has rarely been conducted in previous studies. Consequently, this study aims to compare different remotely sensed datasets used for structural parameter estimation. For this purpose, textural information extracted from Worldview-2 (WV-2) and SPOT-5 images and statistical attributes calculated for LiDAR-derived data were individually utilized to model the structural parameters of a Pinus radiataplantation. Comparing the results, while the WV-2 data are suitable to estimate stocking and mean diameter at breast height (DBH), mean height and stand volume were estimated more accurately by LiDAR-derived data. Meanwhile, there was no significant difference among remotely sensed datasets for basal area estimation. Finally, it was shown that the mean height and mean DBH were estimated more accurately than density-related structural parameters comprising of basal area, stand volume and stocking with more than 20% estimation error.

There are currently about 1. 2 billion people, nearly a fifth of the global population faced to physical water scarcity, and 500 million by 2025 will be encountered to such status. Of these, 1. 6 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world's population face economic water shortages. According to Iran's geographical position in semi-arid and dry region, and share of irrigated agriculture in water resources consumption, some researchers, policy makers and NGO's are thinking that national wheat production consume the bulk of the renewable water resources. So they propose some limitation for national wheat production. The main point of this article is to answer this question: What is the amount of water consumption trough the national wheat production in a crop year? To answer this question, ArcGIS, wheat production at 401 regional scale and wheat net irrigation information at 620 watershed scale are organized. Furthermore the farm system irrigation efficiencies are estimated by referring to water and agricultural expert's judgment. According to the results net water consumption for 9165176 tons irrigated wheat production is 8106. 4 million m3, weighted average of farm irrigation system efficiencies is estimated 44. 7 percent, so national water consumption for irrigated wheat national production is 18135. 1 million m3, and according weighted average of wheat net irrigation trough the 620 water basin 2907. 1 m3/h, it is estimated about 11628. 02 million m3, green water was used for 4000006 tons dry land wheat production.

Due to rapid expansion of cities, most countries are faced with numerous problems. In many urban areas, not only socioeconomic and environmental issues, but also urban development policies have been affected by this phenomenon. Although population growth is the primary cause of the rapid expansion of cities, unreasonable dispersion of population is the phenomenon that leaves adverse effects on natural environment and cultural communities. Many attempts are made to eliminate the negative effects of the widespread expansion of cities, one of which is “ smart growth” which can be considered as a strategy for urban sustainability that might result in sustainable development. In fact, smart growth strategy attempts to align expansions towards sustainability. This study aimed to assess smart urban growth indicators in order to prioritize urban areas. The research method is descriptive and analytical using Multiple Attribute Decision Making (ELEKTRE) technique. The results show that the region 2 of Kerman city ranks first in terms of smart city indices with 3 wins and 1 loss. Region 1, with 2 wins and 2 losses, ranks second and region 3, with 1 win and 3 losses, ranks third. Finally, region 4 ranks fourth with no wins and 4 losses. Available data shows apparent inequalities among urban areas of Kerman. Development programs should be devised and implemented based on the potentials of each area to improve the conditions of less developed regions.

Rapid urbanization and population growth has resulted in increased traffic congestion and consequently air pollution in most major cities, in particular, in the developing countries. Knowledge on the amount of different air pollutants and their spatial and temporal concentrations is of great importance for decision makers on health, environment and air quality estimation in different scales. Mashhad, as a metropolitan, due to its specific religious, socio-cultural and geographical role in the region is declared as one of the most polluted cities of the country. Given that there is a direct relationship between traffic volume data and air pollutants (PM2. 5, CO and ), this study attempts to estimate the amount of each pollutant based on traffic volume and some primary weather data. We used empirical models proposed in the literature, such as Baker model and AERMOD, as well as linear regression and nonlinear neural network methods to explore the correlation between traffic volume and air pollutants over a period of six months in the city of Mashhad. The results showed low correlation coefficients between traffic volume and air pollutants in all models, indicating that such models may not be suitable to further estimate air pollutants using only traffic volume and primary weather data. Correlation coefficients were lowest for the pollutant PM2. 5 over the time period of the study. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that vehicle average velocity is by far the most influential variable in the empirical models used.

South Khorasan is a less developed region in Iran and due to long distance to the center of the country and being located at the endpoint of energy transmission networks, energy transfer to this province is unstable and expensive. Hence, South Khorasan is a suitable region for the deployment of renewable energy (RE) technologies. Solar energy has a higher priority among other RE-based resources in this province because of the climatic and geographical conditions of this region. In this research, the optimal sites for PV power plants in Birjand County are determined. First, the set of factors and criteria influencing the site selection of PV power plants was defined. Having prepared and processed spatial data and maps, unsuitable areas were eliminated using Boolean logic model. Remaining areas were rated based on technical, socio-economic, and environmental criteria by means of different fuzzy membership functions. Then, these rated areas were mapped. To identify the optimal sites for the on-grid installations of PVs, fuzzified maps were overlaid by fuzzy gamma operator. Finally, the pixels of the final map were classified into five groups based on their fuzzy values. The results show that 0. 5 percent of Birjand County areas are optimal for the establishment of PV power plants.

Dam construction is a wide civil activity which appeared as main necessary infrastructure of development for Iranian planning managers. Because Iran is located in a dry and semi dry region and the necessity of need to water resources, the construction of many dams is justified in inappropriate areas. Dam construction creates some changes in the area, so being aware of morphological changes in both upstream and downstream area is the most important factor for regional management, Reducing damages to structures, infrastructure and reservoir dam. Because of this necessity, the present study is deal with extraction of morphological changes in Taleqan dam upstream as a result of dam construction, applying time deferential remotely sensing data. For this purpose, three set of aerial photos relate to years 1334, 1350, 1380 (before dam construction) is used for extraction of morphological changes. In the next step, panchromatic images (Cartosat-1 satellite) related to years 1388, 1390, 1394 (after dam consternation) are collected. The results show that nearly 58 percent of the study area has negative change in elevation (max 31. 2 cm). Whereas the positive elevation changes at a rate of 1 cm to a maximum 12 meters have covered more limited areas (35% range) in the end of main river bed and dam back areas, which is mainly due to sediment deposition. The result of extracted longitudinal profiles before and after construction from DEMs show significance changes in river bed. Also, change in the profile from the U-close to the similar U-open state is appreciable. Another point is that erosion activity is changed from bed to lateral erosion, and the primary cutoffs are expanding. According to the results, due to base level positive change in this part of Shahrud River, it is raised the conditions for entering into the transformation stage. So in addition to destroying the marginal structures, the conditions for transferring of more sediments from the loose slopes adjacent to the dam reservoir is prepaired.