Geography and Environmental Sustainability
Year:2012 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:7

Changes in the land use adversely affect the Hydrological processes in a catchment and disrupts the natural water balance. In this study, changes in the hydrological components of Kordan watershed due to the land use change have been studied in the years 1987 and 2000 and 2011. According to the research method used, at first the land use layers for the three mentioned years were obtained from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) using the supervised classification method. The rainfall, Flow and daily temperature data, along with the monthly evaporation of Najmabad station was used to simulate the rainfall-runoff with HEC-HMS model. In the basin model component, the SCS Curve Number and SCS Unit Hydrograph were used respectively for the loss and transform methods; the Specified Hyetograph was used in the meteorological model too. Simulation results showed that the runoff coefficient has been increased from 71.38 percentage in 1987 to 73.71 percentage in 2000 and 77.89 percentage 2009.

Good urban system and hence the good distribution of urban size is a factor for any kind of development in the region and the country. This distribution has been measured using mathematical and statistical models. Urban system is spatial visualization of political economy and land management. The study of urban systems determines the distribution and balance of population in the cities. According to the importance of urban system, this paper examines the urban system in part of the Iranian territory. Accordingly, Markazi province is selected as one of the ancient civilization in Iran. The temporal scope of the study includes a 30-year period (1976-2006). This paper use descriptive - analytical research method and libraries and documentation have been used for the data collection. Techniques such as Herfindahl indices, Henderson, and entropy are used to analyze the urban system in the Markazi province. The paper results show spatial imbalances are evident in Markazi province. Urban growth and development is more specific to Arak and Saveh _the major cities and industrial centers of the province_ from among 27 urban points in the province. Despite the increasing number of small cities, the population proportion of the small cities has declined compared to big cities, in recent years. This is the situation that the declined population in small cities causes imbalances in urban system. Also prime city has declined during this period. The reduction of small cities don't cause balance in urban system. As part of reasons for the absence of the effect, we can mantion the attraction of small cities emigrants to surrounding urban areas of Arak _ Senejan and Karahroud. The rank and status of these cities has grown rapidly, for this reason. In fact, Primacy indices decline in demographics Statistics but population pressure and density has been increased in the surroundings of the prime city.

Examining stable agriculture and it’s sub-systems is essential for obtaining more knowledge and information about these systems’ situation and, consequently, designing appropriate strategies and programs in moving towards stable agriculture. The main goal of this study is to examine the technological effects of modernization, renewal and consolidation of rice fields and to assess its success in terms of the above-mentioned criteria based on farmers and experts’ viewpoints. The statistical community of this research consists of two groups. The first group includes 9 villages from Gharetoghan located in central part of Neka which have undergone the mentioned project. The other group consists of the experts that the project is directly performed by them or they were responsible in the performed project. The data was collected through field study and questionnaire distributed among the 260 farmers of the area understudy and 68 experts. The findings show that there is a correlation between the farmers and experts in the effectiveness of the project in terms of technological aspect. The correlation coefficients of technological aspect are 0.641 respectively.

In this paper we try to predict last freezing day of spring for 17 meteorological stations in west and northwest of Iran by Artificial Neural Networks. The method used to do so was the back propagation method. Climatologic data included first day of freezing, minimum absolute temperature in the last day of freezing, humidity at 3 o’clock (GMT) in the last day of freezing, average relative humidity in the last day, average pressure in the day before last day and cloudiness in the last day of freezing input the network, and the last day of freezing was output. Artificial neural networks could predict the last day of freezing for all 17 stations with an accepted error. Biggest errors in this work belong to Arak station with 1.1142 % and smallest errors belong to Mahabad station with 0.254 %. It was concluded that zonation of the religion based on accomplished prediction exposed effects of the both height and topography.

Tourism sample regions as the subset of tourism poles are one of the most important and considerable issues in the tourism industry. In fact, the development of tourism sample regions will lead to the development and expansion of tourism poles. The Present study is an applied–developmental research which aims to rank the tourism poles of Kermanshah Province. Adapting a descriptive - analytical and survey methodology, the study has utilized questionnaire as research instrument. At first, using Delphi technique, 10 indexes were determined for assessment of the sample regions. Then, the data from the questionnaires were examined through TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making techniques and the tourism poles were prioritized. According to these prioritizations, the tourism sample regions in Kermanshah pole with 0.9448 SL+i were in a very good level in comparison to other regions, and the sample regions in Hewraman pole with 0.42981 SL+i were located in the second place and in a moderate level, and other regions were assessed in the next level. The results of the present study, on the one hand, have an important contribution to the management decisions; and on the other hand, help the investors for investment and tourists for the choice of the tourism destinations.

Due to the long distance from moisture sources and having more radiation exposure, the rate of evapotranspiration in dry regions is more than the annual precipitation. Evapotranspiration rates have proved to be good indicators in estimating the severity of aridity in a region. Because of the lesser errors of this method and the lack of recorded climatic parameters in many synoptic stations in Iran, In this study the Hargreaves – Samani method has been used to evaluate the evapotranspiration for 48 synoptic stations in Iran to calculate the evapotranspiration. Then, the spatial analysis was done based on DEM in GIS environment to produce the evapotranspiration maps. Finally, the results integrated to produce the zonation map of intensity aridity in Iran. The results in seasonal and monthly scale showed that the intensity of evapotranspiration was acceptable in conformity with dominated air masses during different seasons in Iran. The Combination of the produced evapotranspiration maps for mean scale of 12 months in 30 years time period revealed that all of the different regions of iran are located in the dry climatic condition since in all of these regions evapotranspiration rate is more than rainfall at least in three months of a year. The accuracy of the results with more intensity is confirmed in the northern and southern coasts of the country and for the central plateau of Iran.

Tourism is a multifaceted activity and one of the most complex businesses with regard to human geography. The sustainable development in tourism planning is important since the development of tourism attractions and activities highly relies on the natural environment, historic heritage and cultural patterns. Historical and cultural fabric of the cities is part of the national capital not only due to their beauties, the persistence of collective memory, and their function in establishing an identity for us, but also since they are residance of millions of people. However, these regions have negative features such the disturbance of perspective, lack of access to adequate facilities and equipment, economic and social distress and burnout in the body which, in turn, has led to the evacuation of large populations from these tissues. This research concerns with appropriate strategies for sustainable tourism development strategies with special focus on the older parts of this city. To achieve this goal Delphi Forum Polling Model has been used. This research has resulted in the classification of strategies for sustainable development of tourism in this region in order of priority.