Journal of Environmental Studies
Year:2009 | Volume:35 | Issue:50|Papers Count:18

Structure and function of socio - economic systems present different spatial effects in different countries of the world. In this study, the structure of social and economical systems of Tehran is analyzed to identify the changes within the urban spatial structure. The most important criterion of ran tier government is the income from rant which is more than 42%. However, in Iran government, the income has exceeded through the export of raw materials (including crude oil). Therefore the nature of Iranian economy is based on oil and its related income. The spatial structure of Tehran metropolitan area is heavily affected by this ran tier system since 1970s.Since the characteristics of instruction of the socio-economic systems can be analyzed through the special socio-political study, this paper has investigated the characteristics of the socio-economic system governing Iran in Palavi (from 1920-1979) and Islamic revolution (fromI979-upto now). Furthermore, the analysis of Tehran socio-local reflection and its periphery which is affected by ruling socio-economic changes are studied.After coup economic changes in 1953 and fixation of capitalism system in Iran the country transformed to an important base for west from onside. On the other hand the fixation of the second Palavi regime, made the urban development in Iran and especially Tehran to enter a new guilty step. In 1962 Tehran was transformed to the biggest market of population, capital, work, income and services. Some of important factors that made this change in such situation are land improvements, change of the traditional linkage of urban and rural, mass rushing of villager immigrants to cities, fast increase of oil income, the extensive growth of service requirements, development of economic and communicative infrastructures and the quick increase of principal industries. The result of the transition has appeared types of oppositions which are seen at all board of Tehran. This made the spread of such change uncontrollable.In this period, separating the suburb habitats and the geographical differentiating of the social categories to north and south was made a great gap. In fact this structural characteristic made the social gathering related to the first change of the urban structure. The next steps was upgraded and now in Tehran it is observed that the social slope in macro scale on the land is the same as the north - south geographical slope which has created the different social categories.

The sustainable development is an important concern of the recent century. The concept of "sustainable development" has been an ongoing search for indicators that could support decision-making in this context (UN.CSD, 1996). One can identify three types of approaches, although many intermediate ones exist: 1) Developing an aggregated indicator of sustainable development; examples of this approach are the ISEW and GPI indicators and the Wealth of Nations approach of the World Bank (World Bank, 1996). 2) Developing a comprehensive assessment framework and systematically deriving indicators from these frameworks; an example of this approach is the report to the Balaton Group (Meadows, 1998).3) Developing a set of sustainable development indicators based on consensus without a comprehensive, strictly used assessment framework; examples are the sustainable development indicator work of UN.CSD (UN.CSD, 1996) and the Sustainable Seattle project Scientist has exposure active of quantitative and qualitative models with measure city and socials sustainable development.The concept of sustainable development globally studied. One of the important quantitative models is Ecological Footprint model.In the last few years, the Ecological Footprint (EF) has been frequently mentioned as a potential indicator for the environmental consequences of production and consumption patterns (Rees, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). Much attention have been paid to the EF originally came from environmental and educational organisations (such as The Earth Council and "De Kleine Aarde" in the Netherlands). Currently, this has become a great concern of scientists and politicians.Various researches have studied the method as originally proposed (van den Bergh and Verbruggen 1999; Moffatt 2000 ;).The objective of these works has largely focused on the oversimplification in ecological footprints of the complex task of measuring sustainability of consumption, leading to comparisons among populations becoming meaningless, or the result for a single population being significantly underestimated. In addition, the aggregated form of the final ecological footprint makes it difficult to understand the specific reasons for the unsustainability of the consumption of a given population, and to formulate appropriate policy responses (Moffatt 2000;). While generally acknowledged as a valuable educational tool, the original ecological footprint is seen as a regional policy and planning tool for ecologically sustainable development. (Bicknell et al. 1998, Lenzen and Murray 2001). Development of and debate about the method are continuing. Several organizations have already calculated EF at different scale levels, ranging from individual and urban to the global scale (e.g. Wackernagel et al., 1997; Bicknell et al., 1998; Wackernagel et al., 1999).Ecological footprints calculated according to this original method became important educational tools in highlighting the unsustainability of global consumption (Costanza 2000). It was also proposed that ecological footprints could be used for policy design and planning (Wackemagel et al. 1997)….

Today as the land-filling of solid wastes without taking into consideration the environmental issues would threaten the land greatly, the selection of an appropriate site for hygiene disposal of the wastes is a necessity. On the other hand, the site selection of optimum landfills for solid wastes is one of the most important aspects of waste management. In this paper, we have attempted to specify a landfill site selection for solid wastes of Bonab city, located on the North West Iran within the East Azerbaijan Province using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The per capita tonnage of solid waste production in this city is about 820 g/day, most of which is created during spring and summer, rising at 70 tons per day. Taking into consideration all of the standards, necessities, and borderlines by AHP, we selected 9 suitable sites for solid waste disposal (landfill) in Bonab, through the application of GIS software (ArcView, and ArcGIS), and the application of Spatial Analysis.Out of 9 permitted landfill options, site No.4 was chosen as the most optimum place for landfilling. This site is located in the south east of Bonab 7 km away from Malekan city road. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one of the most widely used tools for multi-criteria decision making. We have applied this technique for the solid waste landfill site selection of the city of Bonab, located on North West Iran within the East Azerbaijan Province. The per capita tonnage of solid waste production in this city is about 820 g/day, most of which is created during spring and summer, rising at 70 tons per day.The present landfill site is located in a region called Ghreh Ghoshoon in southern districts. The utilization of the site began in 2001; total of the land-filling area is predicted to be 10 ha. A traditional landfilling method used to be applied for waste disposal. There are 9 permitted zones for landfill site according to the maps and studies carried out. Using an AHP method, we chose the best option taking into consideration criteria such as geomorphology, environmental conditions, hydro climatic elements, land uses, and economic aspects.

Capability of land for various land uses is limited. Based on this fact, capability assessment and allocation of land uses with regards to the ecological potential is considered a preventive first step towards environmental protection. Many of the GIS uses in land capability studies in Iran have thus far been limited to mapping influential resources rather than analyzing maps and arriving at combinatorial solutions. Of course a good data base has the potential to lead the analysis to acceptable results. However, there is a need for modeling which bridges the space between data bases and decision making through generating links between the inputs, user defined ideals and criteria and the outputs.In the present study, ecological capability of forested watersheds as management units has been considered. Watersheds 2000 and 3000 in Mazandaran Province and south of the Tonekabon town in the north of Iran were investigated as the case studies. The surface area of the watersheds is 77443 hectares which are located in 50 29 57 to 50 58 43 eastern longitudes and 36 19 22 to 36 45 25 northern latitudes (Fig. 1). Around 42% of the area of the watersheds equal to 32526 hectares is covered with hyrcanian forests. Seven forestry word models have been produced for Iran showing forestry capability of the land for the country (Makhdoum, 1999). The models show the suitability for forestry in decreasing order and include many environmental parameters. These variables are slope, aspect, elevation, rainfall, temperature, humidity, lithology, pedology, soil texture, soil pH, gravel percentage of the soil, soil depth, soil erosion, soil development state and productivity, soil drainage, tree density, productivity and growth and commercial value of the species, and sensitivity of especial sites. These parameters were prepared as digital raster layers and included in the data base to be analyzed using the word models.

In general economical values of environmental resources include both use and nonuse values and Wetlands have mentioned values too because they have wide range of operations. There are various methods to evaluate these operations like Travel Cost Method (TCM), Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), replace cost method and chance cost method. Between these methods, TCM and CVM are adequate to evaluate nonuse values of wetland. TCM method was used for recreational evaluation of Choghakhoor wetland in this study. Results showed that variables like age, education and amount of visitor's income played important role on the use of promenades. Investigating amount of visitor's income showed strong correlation between this variable and number of visited days of promenade and also their interest to pay entrance. The results illustrated unexpected values; the results were similar to the results achieved from parks in United States. It also showed that level of education has a key role in absorbing visitors for Choghakhoor wetland as most of the visitors had university education. Level of advantage has direct relation with income, as relief times of people would increase by increasing level of education. Investigation of studying in some promenades of the country showed that there are more interest among teenagers and middle ages but our results showed most of the visitors (28%) were in the range of 30-34.

Green land is counted as one of the important parts of each city, especially in Tehran which is considered as the metropolis. Recently, the development of urban green area is becoming a great concern. For proper managing of each source, first the inventory of that source is taken into the consideration. Regretfully so far there has been no comprehensive studios pattern for studying the situation of urban forests and urban green area.In this study, by describing the aerial photos, the urban green area has been classified. After performed surveys, it was certified that classification on numerical ortho photo mosaics is easier and more precise, comparing with manual description, and consequently this method was used. The studying Zone is zone No. six, one of the 22 zones in Tehran metropolitan districts limited as to north to Shahid Hemat highway, west to Chamran highway, east to Modarress highway and finally south to Enghelab Avenue. The whole area reaches to some 213.56 hectares equal to 3.3 percent of area of Tehran. (Five years development program municipality no. six, year 1996).On the basis of present data, the per capita green space in studying district is about 4 square meters. (The aforementioned development program)The boundary of the studying zone and in accordance with flight available index, the numbers and technical data of required photos have been digitalized. It is noted that the photos of the area are prepared in the form of "Dispositive scanning" during year 2002 in two scales of 1:8000 and 1:10000. Then by using height digitizing model, the surface(ground) control points, and using the software" PCI Geomatica version 9" all the photos have been modeled as ortho type. In the study, the method of preparing ortho digitizing one has been used. Next step the aerial photos available, in the scales 1:8000 & 1:10000 have been modified. In the same equal scale and have been put aside each one. In fact we have prepared digitized ortho photomozaic and visible classification on the basis of covering layers which have been later described, have been completed. Such layers have been prepared on the basis of previous completed studies together vision of the researcher over digitized ortho-photomozaic photos as well……

Increasing nitrate concentration of surface and groundwater resources in different countries is considered as a common environmental problem, which is threatening the water quality all around the world. In Iran the concentration of nitrate in groundwater resources have exceeded the acceptable limits. This is due to the increase of agricultural and industrial activities and the excessive land discharge of treated and untreated wastewaters which mostly occurs in the urban and rural areas like Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan. The high amount of nitrate causes adverse effects on water ecosystems. Furthermore, high concentration of this contaminant in drinking water may result in health risks like methemoglobinemia in infants and children, childhood diabetes and formation of carcinogenic compounds like nitrosamines.Among different physical, chemical and biological nitrate removal processes, biological denitrification is considered as an efficient and inexpensive method. A wide range of heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria consume nitrate as a final electron acceptor. In the heterotrophic denitrification, heterotrophic denitrifying bacteria, like Achromobacter and Pseudomonas consume organic matters as electron donors. While in the autotrophic denitrification autotrophic denitrifying bacteria, like Paracoccus denitrificans and Thiobaci/lus denitrificans consume inorganic compounds like sulfide, sulfur, molecular hydrogen, thiosulfate and Fe++ as electron donors. However, both processes may encounter some deficiencies during the treatment process. During t his process, some problems related to Heterotrophic denitrification may rise up. These problems are mostly due to the need for an external organic carbon source in the case of wastewaters containing low C/N ratio, need for post treatment of the remained organic carbon removal, excess sludge production and its relevant costs and nitrite accumulation. On the other hand, autotrophic denitrification may encounter problems like alkalinity consumption particularly at high-nitrate, low alkalinity of wastewater, high sulfate production and low nitrate removal ratio…..

Nowadays, energy is recognized as one of the main factors to the formation and development of industrial communities. The importance of Oil and petroleum is highlighted as their basically role at human life. Iran has major importance at this field due to great capacity of energy resources, especially oil and gas, and also special geopolitical position .On the other hand, during recent years oil products has decreased because of growing population and increasing demand to oil products and decreasing of crude oil extraction at compare to export. However, to achieve suitable levels of production, the use of improved technologies should be considered.Another way, to save oil products and prevent the evaporation loss or leakage is suitable using of storage tanks. Evaporation of hydrocarbons and their products from on the ground storage tanks has been of special concern in the recent years. Emissions from storage tanks are responsible not only for a depletion of the product supply but also for contributions to atmospheric pollution. Storage tank of hydrocarbons are important evaporation source of volatile organic compounds (VOC).In the present investigation the methods of hydrocarbon evaporation calculation is studied. Subsequently hydrocarbon evaporation is computed from Tehran's North-West storage tanks using Tank-4 software. All necessary parameters which influence evaporation from storage tanks are introduced into the software…..

Noise population is one of the most important environmental pollution cases that cause some troubles for inhabitants and employees in city limit and it is seriously considered as a hygienic risky case and even immunity in the world (Abaspour, 1992).The population of khoramabad city as Lorestan state capital has been 305590, on the basis of population estimate in 2003. It has three-city area and it is located at north-southern corridor of country (management and planning organization of Lorestan province 2004). The matter lead to great bulk of jam that pass through the passageway and linking line that cross through khoramabad city and caused diffusion of many kinds of pollution specially noise pollution. During last decade, khoramabad city developed rapidly in the field of population, expanding and placing of industries and work station, that all of these cases have effectively increased the noise rates in different parts of city. Noise pollution cause dangerous problems, such as nervous illness and related heart attack, heart beat and the increase of blood pressure, asthma, temporary deafuess and constant deafuess (Abaspour, 1992). Little attention has been paid to the field of noise pollution yet; so, it shows the necessity of present study. The main objectives of this study are: detecting the noise pollution map by using of Arc GIS, comparing the present situation with standard amounts, the delivery and complete of healthy questionnaires to determine the rate of individual satisfaction of noise rates in khoramabad city. A sound level meter device Bruel and kjaer 2230 model, made in Denmark and conformed by international standards has been used in this investigation….

Moisture and air pollutions intensify metallic and nonmetallic surface corrosions. Corroded surfaces exposed to rain washing cause pollution transportation in water and soil environment, especially in industrial areas. The corrosion of materials explained much of the heavy metal content of the storm water (Akan, 2003). In Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ) near the city of Asaloyeh, urban and industrial storm runoff is collected mainly by certain canals and pipes ending into the shoreline and transported to Persian Gulf without any treatment or reclamation. In the first minute of runoff occurrence, quality of storm in industrial areas relatively small with different material (metals) uses is studied. Investigation of storm runoff quality in PSEEZ has shown heavy metals in storm basins of gas refineries and petrochemical industries. The concentrations of heavy metals in the storm runoff ponds of PSEEZ has presented in Tablet. The results from this part of study indicated that storm water quality could be fairly well predicted if the pollutant sources were known.This paper describes a first attempt to approach the storm water quality problem by means of the pollution sources. The calculations are made on a monthly basis and will only give average pollutant flows. Research is going on to apply the idea of pollutant sources to quality modeling. In 2006 the main project started. The aims of the project were to identify and quantify the pollutant sources of the urban storm water….

Sulfur oxides are among the main air pollutants with vast environmental and hygienic damages. Moreover, there are new standards set by governments and international organizations to confine the amount of SO2 emission from the factories' stacks. There are various methods for sulfur oxides removal from stacks. In the present study to control sulfur oxides of Sulfuric acid plant two methods have been selected. The first method was desulphurization by ammoniac (Plant A) and the second one was a combination of the first method and dry scrubbing process with calcium hydroxide as the sorbent material (Plant B). Simulation of the systems was carried out through HYSYS v3.1 software. Considering the simulation results, 110 tones of sulfur oxides production were removed daily in the first method. Moreover, 89.66 tones of ammonium sulfate and ammonium sulfite was produced which are useful products. the Second method has two stages: at the first stage 95.64 tones/day of calcium sulfite were produced and in the second stage 7.755 tones/day of ammonium sulfate and ammonium sulfite were produced which are all among the useful products which can be sold or consumed in the same plant. Moreover, 110 tones/day of sulfur oxides were removed through the second method. The removal of sulfur oxides was nearly the same in both methods and they were compared to each other from the economic point of view. Therefore, economic index of these two methods were calculated through COMFAR III software with two presuppositions i.e. as in both plants sax pollutant is reduced equally (110 tones per day), the revenue gained by decrease in external costs is the same. Thus, we can ignore the revenue in both plants. Consequently, in the first assumption the external costs were ignored in order to calculate the actual profit or the pay back rate to the investor. In the second assumption in order to estimate the entire revenues gained by these environmental projects, the decrease of external costs made by removal of sax was considered as one of the revenues of the project. To compare the economical status of plants A and B, only the costs and revenue of these two units were taken into consideration and revenues of the other units of sulfuric acid plant were assumed similar. To calculate the tables and economical indexes of each plant Microsoft Excel and COMFAR III software which is designed by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) were utilized.

In many countries, contamination of surface and subsurface water resources threatens human and other organisms' life. Improper application of animal manures and sewage sludge is considered an important cause for the soil and water pollutions. Pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and protozoa are the significant case of animal and human death in many parts of the world. Animal manures can contain several human pathogens that can potentially contribute to surface and groundwater contamination when applied to agricultural soils. Transport of pathogenic bacteria has been recently considered as a major source of surface and subsurface water contaminations. Bacterial transport through porous media and the affecting factors are the subjects of many recent researches. Many factors affect the bacterial transport through the soil profile. Soil physical, chemical and biological properties such as soil water content, porosity, flow velocity, pore attributes, pH, organic matter and temperature, climate factors and the bacteria properties such as size, type and mobility, could influence the bacterial transport. Soil might act as a filter for bacteria. The high soil water content could facilitate the bacterial transport. Water flow velocity is also an important factor affecting the bacterial transport. Specific surface of soil particles also affects the bacterial retention in the soil. Net electrical charges of most bacteria are negative so that adsorption is greater at low pH values due to positive charges of soil surfaces in acidic conditions.Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and calcium sulfate (CaSO4) are the two important soil minerals in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran and many countries. There was no information about specific influences of these minerals on the bacterial transport. This study was conducted to explore the impacts of these two minerals on Pseudomonas fluorescents transport through repacked mineral-sand mixtures under unsaturated water flow condition. The sand was collected from the North beach and was carefully washed with distilled water. The sand had no organic matter but had 7.5% CaCO3, 2.1 and 8.3 g kg-1 amorphous and crystalline Fe, and 0.32 and 1.1 g kg-1 amorphous and crystalline AI, respectively. The treatments consisted of CaCO3 (0, 5, 10 and 20 %w/w) and CaSO4 (0, 5 and 10 %w/w) which were mixed with the sand. The experiment was in factorial arrangement adapted to a completely randomized design with three replicates.

This document provides feasibility study of using treated domestic wastewater in concrete mixing. Today, concrete is one of the most important construction materials. From first time that concert was used in construction materials, always the drinkable water used for concrete mixing water.Domestic wastewater contains about 400 ppm of organic materials. After the treatment of wastewater, concentration of organic matters will reduce to 20 ppm which is so low for affecting strength of concrete. Materials and methodsTreated wastewater from SHAHRAKE GHODSE wastewater treatment unit was used in the experiments. Before using treated wastewater as the mixing water, it was analyzed in laboratory. Then the results were compared with U.S standards and UK standards. The sample was made of 3 main unit streams, primary sedimentation unit; secondary sedimentation unit and final outlet treated wastewater. Then the sample analysis was don e by the Faculty of Environment in Tehran University. Table 1 shows the quality analysis of wastewater stream….