Geography and Environmental Sustainability
Year:2013 | Volume:3 | Issue:6|Papers Count:7

Despite the fact that a large amount of academic research in Iran have been allocated to tourism studies in recent years,  yet it must be acknowledged that the development of tourism, especially in rural areas has not been paid enough attention and planning. In this regard, it appears to be essential to present a hierarchical classification of tourism areas and establish an effective framework for distributing tourists, delivering appropriate services, and desired function. Rural settlements of Khurbiabanak city with its unique features for the development of tourism can play an effective role in the further development of this region. This study investigates the potentials and capabilities of the rural settlements. While introducing unique features and capabilities of this area, this study tried to give priority to the rural settlements of areas in the light of their capabilities and levels of tourism development in order to attract tourists and allocate more infrastructure services. This applied study relying on deep field studies, using quantitative models, has resulted in a ranking of rural settlements in the mentioned area. To reach these goals, at the beginning of the study, using experts’ advises and previous studies in this field, the researchers set their criteria and indicators. Then, after completing the paired comparison questionnaires by expert and applying the hierarchical process (AHP), the weight of each criterion has been determined. After that, conducting (ELECTERE) technique, rating villages accomplished. In this study, the Expert Choice software was employed for the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results indicated that villages such as Byazeh, Jandagh, Mehrjan, Garmeh, and Ayraj were given higher priority in tourism ranking in the abovementioned area.

Pastures are renewable natural resources which provide the grass for the cattle need, adjust the weather and hydrological flows, provide water for aquifer, prevent soil erosion, control pollution, dispel food poisoning, and bring about soil formation through improving soil formation processes. Classification of pastures with regard to the rate of grass production and paying fine to pasture owners in case of famine is one of the issues which have always been the focus of agricultural planners. Kurdistan province is one of the fertile regions for range management in Iran. In order to classify the pastures across the province, a database was established which contained data such as topographic maps, slope, highness levels, radiation direction map, geology, soil, plantation, hydrographic network and climatic layers of temperature and Precipitation. In this study the daily data of temperature and Precipitation were obtained in a statistical period of 19 years (1990-2009). All these informational layers were reweighted and reclassified based on the ecologic needs of pasture plants. Using Boolean logic in the Arc GIS environment, these layers were integrated and the classification maps of pasture Kurdistan province in 3 groups (rich, medium and poor) were provided. The results of the study showed that using the different informational layers corresponding ecological needs of pasture plants is an optimal method for providing an appropriate classification of pastures. 37824.2 hectare out of 2904642.7 hectare of the total area of Kurdistan province were classified as good with an exponentiation of degree 1, while 402891.3 hectare were classified as medium with an exponentiation of degree 2 and 411897.1 as poor with an exponentiation of degree 3.

Achieving urban sustainable development without participation of citizens is very difficult. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the factors which affect citizen's participation in urban affairs management.  The Method used in this research is a synthetic one including secondary data analysis and survey analysis methods. In data gathering, we made use of articles, documents and questionnaires, and the areas of this study are some selected areas of Sabzevar city in 2011. Statistical society of research is 4578 families, and the Sample size is 229 families that were chosen by random sampling. Reliability coefficient for all items was 0.89 and for all dimensions was more than 0.72 except for the sense of social security dimension. Variables in this research included age, years of residence in the city/neighborhood, education, ownership of residential house, citizen's participation in city affairs management, social interactions, and the citizens’ opinion about social security, and life satisfaction. The results shows that there are significant relationships between two variable including ownership of residential house and years of residence in city/neighborhood as the independent variable and citizen's participation in urban affair as dependent variable. Furthermore, between citizen's participation in urban affair as the independent variable and social interactions, sense of social security, sense of place and life satisfaction as the dependent variable there are significant relationships too. However, there is not significant relationship between age of respondents and their participation in urban affairs management. Meanwhile, the findings of this research indicated that the increase of citizen's participation in managing urban affairs has a positive impact on their satisfaction of life. Training students and adolescents in schools about the usefulness of participation on urban affairs, creation of council in neighborhoods and improvement and gradation of urban culture among citizens were proposed for better participation of citizens in urban management.

Different material’s thermo-physical properties have significant impact on near-surface weather condition which leads to the formation of the urban micro-climates so that, these properties are the main reason for difference between urban and rural air temperatures. To extract different land cover surface temperature patterns such as Asphalt, Soil, Cement and Stone, three OPUS 200/300 Data Loggers with six PT100 sensors were installed in Geophysic Weather Station in University of Tehran and the temperatures of land covers were measured in 10 minute-time intervals during one statistical period (2012-2013). Then, using weather condition data gathered from Geophysic weather Station, land covers surface temperature patterns were divided into six categories including Sunny, Rainy, Snowy, cloudy, windy and a day after rain. Generally, one can conclude that different land covers surface temperature completely obey their thermal properties in sunny, windy and cloudy weather conditions so that, some surfaces such as Asphalt and cement which have less thermal conductivity and high absorbency show the highest surface temperature during the day but only there are some fluctuations in temperature behavior in cloudy and windy conditions which are according to the cloud cover changes or wind speed. While, in rainy and snowy conditions both air and surface temperature have many variations because of cloudiness and precipitation ,and the trend of temperature is not sinusoidal and the main factor is permeability, for example some surfaces such as soil with high permeability shows high temperature.

Sustainable and continuous development of each country is dependent upon Sustainability of it’s agricultural system. In countries which are dependent on rural economy, sustainable agricultural development is of great importance economically, socially, culturally, and politically. The main objective of this study is to investigate the agricultural sustainability in rural areas with the focus on the central district of Ravansar township. The research takes the design of descriptive analysis in which data are collected through instruments used in field studies. Population of the study included the heads of rural families in all villages of Central district in Ravansar (N=4209). Using Cochran formula and stratified sampling, a sample of 188 people was selected and surveyed through questionnaires. In order to estimate the reliability of the research, Cronbachs' alpha coefficient was used and indicated the coefficient of 0.72, 0.73, 0.79 percent for three parts of the questionnaire, representing the appropriateness of the instruments used. The results of statistical analysis in SPSS software show that 55 percent of indicators have been in the unsustainable group, 36.5 percent in somewhat sustainable group and 8.5 percent in sustainable group. Also with regard to the  indicators, 38.70 percent of indicators  are in unsustainable group, 22.58 percent in somewhat sustainable group and 38.70 percent  in sustainable group.

In this study, the role of human has been assessed on lateral erosion and lateral extension of Gamasiyab meanders in Bistoon plain. Human activities on Ghamasiab lateral erosion includes using river material and pumping of water for irrigation. In the recent years, a lot of pumps have been set up on the side of Gamasiab for irrigation. Consequently, when the weakest water reaches to the channel bank in come back, it causes the banks of Gamasiyab canal wearing out and retreat in several ways. This matter has caused the banks of Gamasiyab in few meander strongly wearing out and retreat 30 meters. However, to reach to this aim, the geometrical parameters of 15 meanders that human played an important role in erosion them have been compared with another 19 meanders in a period of 24 years. For this purpose, the satellite images of 1986 and 2010 have been used. First the satellite images were completed from numerically in G I S then circles fixed with meanders and finally the geometric parameters including, wavelength, valley length, central angel, arc radius and the curvature coefficient were measured. Results indicate that the average wavelength of 15 meanders that human interferences on it about 19 meters, the average central angel about 5 degrees, the average arc radius about 26 meters more than another 19 meanders have increased and the valley length decreases about 26 meters less than another meanders. On the basis of this, the curvature coefficient of 15 meanders with human interference increases about 0.13 more than another 19 meanders. In fact, the curvature coefficient of 15 meanders with human interference, have increased from 1.51 in 1986 to 1.7 in 2010, whereas the curvature coefficient of another 19 meanders have increased from 1.22 in 1986 to 1.28 in 2010.

Climate is one of the most important factors affecting the human environment and activities. Nowadays, the development of urban and industrial centers, and maintaining and increasing forest resources requires an increase in the information in different climatic zones. Although large-scale weather systems have the same influence on different parts of Kermanshah Province, this province experiences many  various local climates too. So that these difference has caused the presence or absence of vegetation in different regions of the province .In order to identify climatic areas and adapted vegetations in each area, statistical methods such as factor analysis and clustering was used and 34 climate parameters were selected from 16 meteorological stations in this province. Then, (IDW) method was used to interpolate variables across the province and the data matrix size was obtained as 34 × 62. Factor analysis and an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis through ward linkage method was applied to it. The results show that there are 7 factors which control the climate of Kermanshah: temperature, wind and precipitation direction, moisture, thunderstorm, wind & dust, shower and cloud. Also clustering technique recognized seven sub climatic regions and the most extensive oak habitat was identified in the foothills regions and the main factor in this regard was the wind-precipitation direction.