ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHES
Year:2016 | Volume:6 | Issue:12|Papers Count:23

Hospital waste due to the nature of the infectious and dangerous materials if mixed with municipal waste have a border consequences and risks that would endanger the health and human life and living things, and generally environment. This research was conducted from Dec. 2010 to May 2011, to provide environmental program management of hospital waste at Bandarabbas using experts methods for internal and external factors. Number of people group considered 50 patients in each hospital. Then, using the SWOT method with the most appropriate techniques to analysis program dealt with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the field of hospital waste. After analysing score the internal matrix 2.93 and the external matrix 2.95. esulted. In this study, the study area were within SO or competitive position, for (QSPM) the best strategy among the options available under attitude is attractive, option to reduce waste and segregation for training promote waste with score of 5.41. Finally, it can be stated that using strategic planning and evaluation models, including SWOT and QSPM ability to analysis ideas and thoughts in a creative phase and selection of ideas applicable and priorities for action to develop the management of hospital waste is possible.

Transportation sector is the major consumer of oil products. Since consumption of gasoline has increased during the recent years, pollution of air and warming up of the earth as result of the production of green house gases, has increased. Natural gas, due to its environment friendliness as one of its characteristics, can become the dominant fuel in the transportation sector. In this study, we have evaluated the amount of Green House Gases produced from transportation sector using Clean Development Mechanism formuala. Then external and social costs from produced Green House Gases, the economies of the owner`s and governmental view and the present capacity of CNG stations to replace the CNG for other conventional fuels in zanjan city, were studied according to the variety of sceneries (increasing amount of bi-fule vehicles 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, respectedly). The results show that the most amount of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) belong to the vehicles with conventional petrol engines which exceeds 2.08×1011 CO2 tonnage in a year imposing external and social costs which amount to $2.9×1012 and $1.6 ×1012, respectively, in just one single year. The least amount of (GHGs) belong to the CNG fueled vehicles with 3.4×109 CO2 tonnage in a year imposing external and social costs that would be $1×1010 and 1.4 ×1011, respectively, in just one single year. This study implies that the cost is mounting up, in the owner`s and governmental view. The present capacity of CNG stations to replace the CNG for other conventional fuels is just suited to the existing conditions in this city and the number of bi-fuel vehicles, but in other sceneries which requires that the city must be provided with other stations, should be disused in an independent study.

Due to the growth of industrial activities and air pollution simultaneously, to investigate the relationship between these two variables in planning and environmental policy could be important. In this paper, using standard Granger causality test and Granger causality Hisao test, Causal relationship between air pollution (emissions of CO2) and value added of the industrial sector during the 1968 to 2011 were studied. The data of this study obtained from Central Bank of Iran, World Bank data and the Iran energy balance sheet for the period 1968 to 2009. According to the results, two- sided causality between two variables is proved. According to effect of value added of the industrial sector to emissions of CO2, it is proposed that to enhance the efficiency in use of industrial inputs to move towards environment friendly technologies.

Environmental crisis is one of the governments challenges in the recent century. Governments and policymakers through plans and policies attempt to overcome challenges in environment area until to decrease man destructive effects on environment. Controlling economics methods is one of the tools of environmental degradation reduction. The aim of this study was to estimate suitable green tax on carbon dioxide emission (carbon tax) in cement industry. Translog cost function, estimated for cement industry to assess suitable Green Tax. Cost function equations and costs share were estimated with ISUR systematic method. The Results show all variables were significant in model parameters estimation, beside the interaction variable of wage cost with maintaining cost. The cost function determination coefficient show that 79% of total cost variation of cement production determined by dependent variables in equation. Also according to results, green tax rate on CO2 emission in cement industry determined was 15 percent. It is suggested environmental protection organization use green tax as an economics tool to control and decrease environmental pollutions with examination of country infrastructure and present conditions.

In this article, the amount of pollutants and water discharge in Firouzabadi drainage channel were estimated to be able to simulate the existing and future quality and quantity of the channel, using EPA Storm Water Management Modeling (SWMM). In addition, several best management practices (BMPs) such as; swales and porous pavements were utilized. The goal of using such techniques were to reduce runoff peak flow and non-point source pollution through evaporation, filtration, and chemical or biological treatments. It is obvious that non of above techniques alone, could not improve the runoff quality effectively. It sounds wise to combine two or more techniques together to reach the optimum efficiency in controlling the amount of runoff. In this research, two main models were used: rainfall-runoff model and optimization model. SWMM was applied to simulate quality and quantity of runoff. Nevertheless, Multi Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) was used to optimize the BMPs layouts so that the peak flow will be minimized effectively. The results show that in additon to improve the quality of runoff, BMPs can reduce the peak discharge flow between 8 to 15 percent for 5-year return period.

Landfill of Rasht has been selected without any site selection process. Pollutants from this site, which is located near to Siahroud River, are discharged into Anzali Wetland. This research aims to evaluate landfill of Rasht by current methods for identifying impacts. In this study, landfill site selecting methods such as Oleckno, Drastic and Monavari method was used and compared together. The results show that this site was classified as a good category in Oleckno Method, moderate in Drastic method and unacceptable category in Monavari method. Comparing the results shows a heavy variation. The reasons of this differ in number of parameters and also for the lack of weighting in some methods. Also the results show that considering more parameters in evaluating of landfills can reveal more negative impacts. This research reveals that, the methods whit both specific weight and abundance of parameters show more reasonable results.

Widespread impacts of human activities have been the most important environmental issues of the current century that resulted in the loss of major parts of the structures and functions of important ecosystems around the world. This dilemma, clarifies the need to assess and control these destructive trends. Assessment and monitoring of ecosystem health, means a continuous assessment of overall performance, including: monitoring of sustainability and stability of the structure, function and process of the ecosystem and its resilience after the occurrence of a disturbance or stress. Ecosystem health has been recently monitored by establishing quantitative indicators, detecting and monitoring their changes over a long period of time. Current research illustrates how ecological problems ranging from biodiversity loss to land-use change have benefited greatly from advances in geospatial technologies such as GIS and remote sensing, both in the provision of data and access to spatial data analysis tools. This research intend to study and suggest a new method for monitoring and assessing the environmental health by using spatial indicators based on remote sensing and GIS technologies. The result of the study indicates that among the indicators of ecosystem health based on remotely sensed data, land cover maps with suitable temporal resolution and vegetation indices like NDVI and LAI are the most suitable indicators for ecosystem health estimation. This research also suggests the integration of landscape and biodiversity matrixes as well as non-remote sensing indicators (like carrying capacity and environmental loads estimation) are to be proposed indicators in order to estimate ecosystem health with more accuracy.

In Bushehr sea waters the coastal organisms such as Razor clam (solen roseomaculatus) are exposed to oil pollutions, because of the industrial and shipping activities, as well as oil production. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in oil the most important group of hydrocarbons content, which are marker of oil pollution. Nowadays the bivalve are used in bio monitoring studies, a lot. In order to bio monitor as well as study correlation of PAHs concentration in sediment and S. roseomaculatusin in Bushehr coasts, sampling of sediment and clams were Carried out from five different stations in April 2009. The samples were homogenized and their PAHs content were measured by GC-MS after extracted by soxhlet apparatus. Results showed that tPAHs concentration in stations Kalo, Bardkhon, Piazi, Bupatil and Haleh were 63.7, 45.1, 17.4, 172.1 and 28.9 ng g-1 respectively. Concentrations of PAHs in S. roseomaculatusin from above stations were 490.3, 321.7, 80.2, 759.2 and 111.9 ng g-1 respectively. Sediment and clams from Bushehr Khors are partly high contaminated by PAHs. A significant correlation was observed between sediment and clams PAHs concentration (P<0.05). S.roseomaculatusin seems to be a good agent for PAHs monitoring in Bushehr province in Persian Gulf.

Because of the increasing need to recreational centers in our country, study of ecotourism is a necessity. Several methods of evaluating the environmental satisfaction have been introduced. But the efficiency of each method has not been much discussed in case-studies. In this research, the recreational value of the district was determined in order to study the satisfaction value of the recreational district "Taleghan dam". So, in the present study, the effective elements of willing to pay in Taleghan dam 's visitors and also the average estimation of their willing to pay were determined by contingency valuation method and two-stage Heckman model. The necessary data were gathered through filling the questionnaire and verbal interview of 314 visitor in spring and summer 2011. The results show that 86% of under-studt visitors had the willing to pay for recreation. Using the contingency valuation method, the willingness to pay per person per visit was estimated $1. The variables of the recommended cost, monthly revenue of family members, educational level, satisfaction rate, nativeness, the willingness to revisit, the seasons of spring and summer, satisfaction level are effective elements of the willingness to pay in this method. Also, by means of two-stage Heckman method, the average rate of the willingness to pay was 1 cent. Monthly revenue, educational level, satisfaction rate, occasions of visiting the competitor places of Taleghan dam and satisfaction rate are the effective elements of people's willingness to pay in this method. The results show optimized method for determining the recreational value of Taleghan dam was two-stage Heckman method.

Due to the different factors and complexity of their effects on health and sustainability of urban forest, this study has been tried to determine the effective factors in ecosystem health by dividing Sorkhe Hesar man made forest park to homogeneous units according to natural factors (slope, aspect, high, soil depth) and human factors (amount of irrigation and outdoor recreation intensity). Conifers quality including Pinus eldarica, Cupressus arizonica and Cupressus sempervirens were studied. Evaluation criteria of homogeneous units were height, basal area, crown diameter, crown simultaneity, vitality, herbal layer density and canopy density. In order to study visitor Impact on soil compactness, soil block density and porosity were measured in both 0-15 and 15-30 depth of soil. Analyses of results showed complexity of factors have been affected on site health and sustainability, while slope and soil depth are the most important limiting factors. In fact with decreasing soil depth and increasing slope above 15 percent, to intensive recreation usage, would disropt ecosystem intensely. Also, researches showed that in the similar condition Cupressus sempervirens is more sustainable than Pinus eldarica and Cupressus arizonica.

The importance of Green spaces in urban areas, especially in large industrial cities is an index of social development, which increases the quality of life. Thus distribution of urban green space in a city is very important .This research is more perfect than the study of green space areas because it focuses on distribution. In this research first maps of parks and border of regions were depicted by digital atlas of Tehran parks and parks were classified to Neighborhood, district and regional classes, by using of ArcMap and IDRISI software. Then park maps in twenty-two regions of Tehran, by using the selected landscape metrics including (CA, NP, PD, PLAND, MPS, LPI, LSI, MNN, Shape-MN, SHDI, MSIDI, SHEI, MSIEI), were resulted. Thus Composition, configuration, expanse and continuity of parks were also analyzed by using of Fragstas soft ware. At first twenty-two regions of Tehran were analyzed according to the park classes and then every park was analyzed without belonging to any classes. The regions of one, seventeen, fourteen, twenty one and twenty two indicated the most amount of the fragmentation, connectivity, diversity, evenness and dominance respectively. Neighborhood parks in ten and twenty regions had the most amount of dominance and connectivity respectively. District parks in nineteen region had the most amount of both dominance and connectivity. Regional parks in fifteen region had the most amount of the connectivity. Neighborhood parks have the best spatial pattern in comparison with other classes and spatial pattern of regional parks were unfavorable in comparison with neighborhood and district parks.

Creating active and urban living spaces in cities, is vital. Land use planning help us in locating suitable spaces for forest development and green space based on its ecological characteristics. Selection of tree species in urban is an important goal for green space and urban forestry experts and the selection of suitable plant species is the most importance parts of a successful landscape plan. The study area is 12 sub-watersheds of catchment area on the southern slopes of Alborz in the north buffer of Tehran city. In this research, first the ecological resources were surveyed and analysed to build mapping units. Then with the identified resources, special model of area based on the general model of afforestation (the Iranian model of Makhdoum) was prepared. Finally, ecological capability evaluation with special model was conducted for afforestation. Then the list of indigenous trees and shrubs species and suitable species for planting in northern Tehran and in the green belt were prepared. Finally, with ecological characteristics of the environmental units to suitable species of trees and shrubs were selected in every unit and finally, afforestation map was prepared with the proposed species.

The current study aims to investigate the changes in green space of District 1 of Tabriz City in a 21-year time period (1989 to 2010) using remote sensing techniques. In this research, multi-temporal images of LANDSAT Satellite, sensors TM and ETM+ were used to model physical development and changes in green space of the district during the years 1989 to 2010. Destructive role of expansion of urban areas and transport network have been so significant in dramatic loss of green space in District 1 of Tabriz City. The obtained results revealed that during the studied period (1989 to 2010), the green space area of the district has been decreased from 255.61 ha in 1989 to 180.45 ha in 2010 representing approximate 30% loss of green space area. At the same time, built-up areas have been expanded from 702.19 ha in 1989 to 958.14 ha in 2010 while urban transport network area of the district has been developed from 101.61 ha in 1989 to 291.24 ha in 2010. Finally, some management sterategies were recommended towards taking advantage of available opportunities for developing the green space of the District 1 of Tabriz City of which the most important is "compilation of comprehensive green space management plan".

Urban green space planning and describing its quality is a matter of concern for planning. Green space planning with protection and development of natural and artificial habitats in cities brings placid environment. To achieve the vision and providing long-term goals, strategic planning of urban green spaces were used in this study. In this method, the features in the context of internal and external constraints were carried out to improve the accuracy and improving the efficiency of activities. Such an approach has not been used in the management of urban green spaces in Iran and this study is an attempt to focus on the methodology, offer appropriate management practices for development of urban green spaces in the region two of Karaj.Karaj municipality`s region 2, is 600 ha with population of 107027 people. Public green spaces in the area, calculated 40 ha, includes 17 parks, 6 green fields, 29 Green Boulevards, 26 pieses of green buffer areas, 7 pieces of plantations. In this study, SWOT analysis was used to identify environmental factors (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), to prioritize, strategies with the purpose of green space management in region 2 of Karaj and Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) was used for prioritization of strategies. The results of this study led to the introduction of 6 strategies with " Development of theme parks and new models of public and private green spaces construction", "Expanding and improving water transmission networks to develop green space" and "Establishing programs to empower local communities in the development, maintenance and improvement of urban green spaces" have higher priority.

Lighvan Chay River in East Azerbaijan province named as one of the important tourism zone of the province because of its many natural places for leisure, entertainment and recreational opportunities like field trips and camping. Environmental goods and services are more open access public goods. Lack of awareness of the actual value of the environment is one of the important factors of ignoring the environmental issues and causes environmental deteoration. Therefore, the issue of estimating the environmental value can be helpful to policy-makers and practitioners involved in the conservation and management of natural resources. The aim of this research is to estimate the conservation value of the Lighvan Chay River with the use of contingent valuation method and Double–Bounded Dichotomous Choice (DDC). Results from 149 questionnaires were completed from visitors (in the summer of 2012). Estimating logit model shows that the price offer variable at 1%, marital status and satisfaction of utilities variables were significant at the 5% level and numbers of visits variables was significant at the 10% level. The offered bid variable has marginal effect -0.00004 shows that an increase a unit of bid makes 0.00003 unit decrease in WTP. In this paper willings to pay to protect the area was calculated $2 per month per person by using Shazam 10. Since the average family size was 4.22, so average willings to pay of each family per month was $1.9340. Finally, Mean willingness to pay for each family per year, was calculated $1. Therefore, the formation of the association to preserve the area is recommended. However, according to the positive effect of numbers of visits variable, to facilitate the area’s accessibility by improving road networks is recommended.

Biodiversity as a supporting service of forest ecosystems is declining globally due to land conversion and degradation in response to human needs for food production and settlements. To make informed decisions, evaluation of change impacts under stakeholder-defined scenarios is considered to be an appropriate method which considers the consequences of decline. While land use/cover change modeling is an urgent need, it usually is faced with obstacles due to the methodological problems and lack of explicit spatial data. In this paper, we applied two spatially explicit tools, The Scenario Generator and The Habitat Quality from the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) suite of models, to project the future changes of the Sarvelat and Javaherdasht mountain system in northern Iran, based on land suitability and stakeholder's interests. We also explored the existing spatial patterns of habitat quality as a proxy for biodiversity and predicted its changes in plausible future. In this regard, after quantification of land use/cover changes based on predictive scenario, the degrees of land degradation and habitat quality under both current and future situations were compared. The results showed that any changes outside of protected boundaries, can impact habitat quality inside of the protected areas, as the new threat sources as well as external driving forces of the change occure. Since, the ecosystem supporting services specifically the biodiversity, is usually ignored in landscape planning due to its complex nature of the analysis, the mapped quantified outputs of these models can effectively make easier for decision makers, to understand the distribution patterns and existing richness of biodiversity across a landscape and make compatible policies based on multiple ecosystem services capability.

This paper examines the likely relationship between traffic noise and other environmental variables and bird distribution. The study was conducted in September 2012, along Asian Highway in Golestan National Park. The sampling stations were selected in 76 points using Systematic-Random method at various distances between 0-250 meters from the road. Birds and environmental variables were sampled in a radius of 25 meters from each point. In each of the sampling points and in the center of the plot, birds and other variables such as temperature, relative humidity, traffic noise, number of vehicles (light, heavy and medium-weight vehicles), number of horn beeping, height, the sound barrier height, width of the road, slope and the geographical size were measured. All data were recorded during a week of the year with the heaviest traffic and noise pollution. The birds as dependent variables were divided into three guilds namely Primary Cavity Nesting Birds, Secondary Cavity Nesting Birds and non Cavity Nesting Birds and accordingly, three prediction models were developed. The result of multivariable linear regression analyses showed that in all of these models the most important factor affecting birds is traffic noise.