Journal of Environmental Studies
Year:2010 | Volume:36 | Issue:55|Papers Count:15

Nature has always offered a variety of resources for tourism in different areas. Proper understanding of the nature, significance and importance of these resources are essential for decision makers at all levels to make appropriate plans for improving the ecotourism in the regions. These plans should consider the compatibility of tourism developments to ecological potentials of land. The aim of this research is to evaluate the potentials of tourism development in Lavasan-e Kouchak region based on anjntegrated evaluation of resources offered-in the area. Lavasan-e Kouchak is a rural region located in the north eastern side of Tehran. It is extended on the basins of Lar and Latian lakes, consisting of 6 sub watershed§ or hydrological units; Khoskeh-Rood, Khersang, Barge Jahan, Kond, Afjeh and Ghoochak. The three preserved National Parks of Varjin, Jajrood and Lar has increased the ecotourism attraction of the region. Moreover, along with interesting rural visions, the rich biodiversity of plants and animals, abundance of natural springs, 3500m high peak, waterfalls, possibilities of sport ecotourism such as skiing, water sports, climbing and geotourism, "provide a high potential for natural tourism in the region.At lower altitudes (1400-1800m), the city of Lavasan and the Latian dam reservoir are located. The mid-level areas (1800-2500m) involve all villages and agricultural lands and gardens while climbing and preserved zones are the only tourism potentials of the high and completely mountainous areas (2500-4000m).

Although the concept of ecotourism as the ideal of Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development is based on the global current, eliminating many ecosystems, the role of human interference in the nature is more than that of natural conditions. Because of this, as Mac Krchr believes, there is still a vulnerable stability condition without resistance. Other scholars including Carter and Caudal are in doubt about tourism and environmental sustainability; they believe that sustainable tourism, despite its obligations under environmental conditions, would not be achievable. However, some people like Butler believe that in spite of numerous investigations in this area, we must await the results and the related successful outcomes in the future.

Nowadays, the tourism industry has been transformed to one of the largest and most-profitable parts of the world economy. Urban ecotourism is a kin, d of tourism which appeals to the citizens interested in cultural, historical, religious and natural attractions and enjoy spending a part of their leisure time in this way.Therefore, this study is designed with an emphasis on natural tourism in the city of Tehran.Urban ecotourism is of high potential for tourist attraction, so it has the potential for attracting financial benefits and creates job opportunities in many cities in Iran, including city of Tehran. Many cities in Iran enjoys having climatic diversity and have high potential in urban ecotourism attractions which unfortunately have not yet been explored. Various reasons address these deficiencies. The most significant and effective reason is a lack of knowledge about the characteristics of nature-loving tourists and their leisure pattern.This paper via studying a high number of tourists, would determine their characteristics as well as their leisure pattern to provide a basis for proper decision making and planning for urban tourism.

The Caspian Sea as the biggest surrounded water body (lake} in the world is bordered by the states-of Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. This Sea has long been under pressure environmentally, due to the fact that it is one of the richest oil-and-gas bearing regions which are also surrounded by large domestic, industrial and agricultural areas. Urban development beside increasing industrial and oil production activities (oil refinery and petrochemical plants) in the northern and eastern regions of Caspian Sea in recent years have caused high amount of oily pollutants enter to this sensitive area. In this region, land-based sources, together with offshore oil fields, tanker traffic, and trans-9aspian pipelines have generated large quantities of oil spills which remain trapped within this land-locked system. Despite the high importance of-Caspian Sea from ecotourism standpoint, few investigations have been published on the environmental problems arising from offshore oil exploration and production so far. In these studies highly contaminated sediments to oily hydrocarbons in central and south eastern coast of the Caspian Sea in the vicinity of Azerbaijan and Iran western shore have been reported.

Population growth and increase in the rate of consumption in the recent years, has lead the solid waste management issue to a serious challenge especially in the large cities. One of the effective, environmental friendly and economical methods for solid waste management is Vermicomposting technology. In Vermicomposting, earthworms especially Epigeic species cooperate with other microorganisms for biotransformation and bio stabilization of organic waste converting into high valuable humus like substance or Vermicomposting. Vermicomposting has variety of applications such as bio adsorbent to removal heavy metal ions, enhancement of microbial community and enzyme activity, plant growth and germination index improvement, reduction of recalcitrant hydrocarbon in soil, wastewater treatment's sludge handling and reduction in the concentration of some pesticides in soil. Therefore Vermicomposting has two important advantages, first to reduce amount of organic wastes and the second to generate high valuable products.

Rapid growth of technology, access to new systems of production and replacing plastics and unnatural fibers instead of natural materials increased the quantity of industrial solid waste and enhanced the hazardous nature of the wastes. Based on the Definition of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), hazardous waste includes waste, or combination of wastes that can be dangerous or potentially harmful to human health and other creatures. In Tehran megacity with a 7705036 population, 7000 tons of solid wastes per day have been generated in 2008. According to the municipality's division, Tehran is divided to 22 local zones.9th zone of Tehran municipality with 7655183 square meters area consists of2 districts and 8 sub districts.

LCA has been successfully utilized in the field of solid waste management to select the practical disposal methods for an area; using database existed in literature for other areas, to improve the present waste management system and to compare the present methods in an area. Kirkeby (2005) showed that despite the general expectancy concerning increase in emissions by going down from source reduction to landfilling through waste management hierarchy, the environmental impacts may be affected mainly by storage, collection and transportation stages. Blengini (2008) confirmed the above mentioned findings by conducting a research on a composting facility in Italy, concluding that the source separation of wastes had diverse effects on environmental impacts in his case study. In another study the main source responsible for GHGs emissions in current MSW management options in Taipei Island, Taiwan, was reaped as recycling the kitchen wastes for swine feed, regarding the use of heavy fuels needed to cook and sterilize these wastes.The present study focuses on the assessment of environmental performance of alternative MSW disposal scenarios defined for Siri Island located at south of Iran. The environmental impacts of GHGs emissions and energy consumptions are studied in this research, and it is desired to find out the effects of waste paper and plastic source reduction activities on the above mentioned impacts.

Indoor air quality (IAQ) generally refers to the quality of physical, chemical and biological characteristics of air in an indoor environment. Indoor air pollution could threat people's health and on the other hand has long been recognised as a significant agent of deterioration of cultural heritage collections housed in museums, galleries, archives and library buildings. The most important gases that are sourced outdoor have long been considered to be Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Ozone (O3), Considering valuable objects kept in museums and cultural heritage buildings, and the importance of maintaining them, it is necessary to use a method with the ability to estimate the concentration of indoor pollutants and evaluate their effects on collections. In this research, attempts have been focused to survey the concentration of pollutants in two important museums in Iran, and consequently the data produced by mathematical models are compared with real measured data. IMPACT model has been developed as a software tool for estimating the damaging levels of air pollutants concentrations inside cultural heritage buildings.

New group of polymers have been synthesized that are electricity conductive. Therefore, they are called conducting polymers. These so-called artificial metals have interesting optical and electrical properties. One of the most conductive polymers is "polyaniline" that is synthesized easily at low cost and with excellent environmental stability. Polyaniline is synthesized chemically and electrochemically in the shape of powder and film. The synthesis condition is noticeably effective on the properties of the produced polyaniline.Reaction temperature, molar ratio of aniline/oxidant, types and concentration of oxidant used in synthesis, will influence the morphology and conductivity of polyaniline. In this paper, Absorptive characteristics of polyaniline synthesized with two different oxidants including potassium iodate and ammonium persulfate has been studied.

Estimation of design floods in ungauged catchments is frequently required in hydrological practice and is of great economic significance Hydrologists consider artificial unit hydro graph as one of applicable methods to estimate peak discharge for water sheds for which hydro climatology data is not available.In general, there are three methods for estimating pea' k discharges, including; Schneider, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and triangular methods. All three methods give the same results in regards to the confidence level.However, SCS method estimates flood hydro graphs with less error than other methods.The aim of this research is to suggest the best peak discharge estimation which has the most compatibility with natural hydrographs method. Moreover, natural and artificial methods and unit hydrograph will be compared with. each other. In addition, the best estimation method will be proposed for calculation of coefficients of artificial method. Finally, the flood peak and design flood will be determined.

In Enhanced Coagulation, total organic carbon removal depends on the total amount of organic Carbon in raw water and Alkalinity. But usually the removal of organic platter by coagulation depends on the concentration of dissolved organic carbon, chemical nature of natural organic matter, type of coagulants, pH and concentration of coagulants.Coagulants concentration has a Stockio metric relationship with dissolved organic carbon (DOC), raw water or Ultraviolet absorbance at a wavelength of 254 nm (UV254).This Stockio metric relationship depends on a kind of coagulator that positively charges aluminum species to neutralize the negatively charged natural organic matter.-Optimum coagulant is defined by a certain pH and concentration to create maximum removal of turbidity, particles and total organic carbon precursor DBPs and to create the minimum coagulant residual.

Population ecology of commercial marine bivalves is the subject of many studies; conversely, information on the fresh water bivalves is very scarce because the exploitation of these mollusks has never been important, except in limited areas and at certain periods. For example, in Northern America, pre-Columbian societies used freshwater mussels mainly for food. In the Tennessee Valley the shell of ten species are used in the button industry and exported to Japan for cultured pearl industry. In Rumania, the shells of freshwater bivalves, nominally those of the genus Unio, are exploited for button industry and their soft tissues are used as fodder in poultry farming. According to Negus, her studies on Unio and Anodonta were the first on the growth rate and production of freshwater bivalves. Magnin & Stanczykowska compared the results of their research on the production of fresh water bivalves in Canadian lakes with those done by European authors due to lack of American studies on this subject. Most researches started from the 1960’s, when these mollusks were used as indicators of radioactive and stable pollutants. Even if the commercial value of the freshwater bivalves is negligible, their role in the trophic ecology of certain environments is important.Freshwater bivalves of south Caspian Sea lands are dispersed in major parts of this area. The swan mussel (Anodonta cygnea) is one of the most famous fresh water suspension feeders in comparison with other few fresh water mussels in Caspian Sea lands. It seems to be an active agent in natural water cleaning from suspended particles down to bacteria.