Journal of Environmental Studies
Year:2018 | Volume:44 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:13

Expanded Abstract 1. Introduction Following an accidental oil spill, the removal of surface oil is usually the important concern for decreasing energy loss and damage to the environment. O-xylene is one of the common compounds which exist in the effluent of oil and petroleum industries. Consequently, the removal of o-xylene from groundwater and surface waters is essential. One of main techniques that are useful for cleaning up the soluble oil is adsorption. Adsorption methods are simple and economical and the removal of toxic chemicals using porous adsorbents has aroused attention. Graphene as a new synthetic 2D allotrope of carbon has advantages as an adsorbent due to its flexible structure. Graphene has a very fine potential as adsorbent material due to its low cost and environmentally friendly product and by the fact that graphene can be reused without any significant change in its adsorption capacity.

Expanded Abstract 1. Introduction It is inevitable to analyze the existing contaminant elements in soil as the most important source of nutrition for human. Heavy metals are considered and referred among these elements. The contaminated soils of urbanized regions are directly related to human, while these elements are absorbed by plants, through which they enter the human food cycle. The excessive increase of these elements results in the growing incidence of diseases such as cancer. Moreover, the irresolvability of these materials may have dangerous impacts on the human digestion as well as nervous systems. Contamination, due to heavy metals in soil, has even resulted in some animals’ death. There are various factors involved in soil contamination. One of main factors is the incorrect use and increasingly irregular exploitation of nature by human beings. In Iran, inappropriate economic exploitation of agricultural fields and aberrant use of chemicals have led to the higher concentration of heavy metals in soil, turning to a crucial problem in certain areas. The most significant cause of soil contamination is the wrong use of chemical fertilizers, resulting in the agglomeration of heavy metals in soil. Therefore, it is inevitable to identify the spatial distribution of these elements. The geo-statistical instruments have facilitated the quantification of soil spatial characteristics, whereby leading to the probability of spatial interpolation. Objectives of the study are: (i) to prepare zoning maps of elements including Zinc, Copper, Iron, Manganese and Potassium using mathematics and geo-statistics methods as well as choosing the most optimum technique of spatial interpolation by comparing RMSE, MAE and MBE; (ii) to analyze the probable spatial correlation between the concentration of these elements in agricultural soils; (iii) to distinguish the regions affected by the excessive contamination higher than the threshold limit of general index and WHO standard and also Iran’ s Soil and Water Research Institute’ s standard.

Extended Abstract 1. Introduction In aquatic ecosystems, wetlands and rivers have a great ecological importance. Heavy metals from geological and anthropogenic sources are increasingly being released into natural waters. Contamination of aquatic ecosystems with heavy metals has seriously increased worldwide attention, and a lot of studies have been published on the heavy metals in the aquatic environment. Under certain environmental conditions, heavy metals may accumulate to toxic concentrations and cause ecological damage. Mercury is a special concern in marine ecosystems, where methylation occurs during the process of biotransformation and accumulates in biota. Mercury is a toxin to the central nervous system and it can readily cross the placental barrier. Lead is attracting wide attention of environmentalists as one of the most toxic heavy metals. The sources of lead release into the environment by waste streams are battery manufacturing, acid metal plating and finishing, ammunition, tetraethyl lead manufacturing, ceramic and glass industries printing, painting, dying, and other industries. Lead has been well recognized for its negative effect on the environment where it accumulates readily in living systems. Lead poisoning in human causes severe damage to the kidney, nervous system, reproductive system, liver and brain.

Expanded Abstract 1. Introduction One of the main concerns of industrialization is the corresponding environmental effects. Industrialization has affected the entire environment with its severe downside problems. The formation of massive pollution made by industries is the result of the constant need and greed of the human being. These industries, including transportation and manufacturing, are exhausting the earth’ s resources and are causing tremendous stress on the environment and the ecological system. Water, soil and air pollution are defined as the negative results of industrial development and industrialization. Global warming and greenhouse effects are the result, which is a massive impact of industrialization on the environment. The degradation of the entire environment and ecological system is inclined to become permanent and tends to cause several negative effects on the economy, by causing human losses, ill health of the employee’ s at large costs to governments, manufacturing and society. Therefore, it is very important to find necessary solutions to control such effects to facilitate the conditions for achieving sustainable industrial growth. This requires to identify the exact effects of industrialization on environment and the factors and solution which can mitigate this kind of bad effects of industrialization. According to the literature, there are a wide variety of variables that can help policymakers to control the side effects of industrialization. Social capital is one of these factors. This paper is to investigate the contribution of social capital in moderating the environmental effects of industrialization.

Expanded Abstract 1. Introduction Valuation of non-market functions and services of the natural resources and the environment is important due to some reasons including understanding the environmental and ecological benefits by humans, feedback of the importance of environmental issues to the planners, creating the relation among economic policies and incomes from natural resources, measuring the role and importance of the environmental resources in improving the welfare of society and sustainable development, adjusting and reforming the national accounts such as gross national product (GNP), and preventing the uncontrolled destruction and exploitation of natural resources. The maximum willingness to pay (MWTP) by the users for non-market goods such as improving the quality of the environment, wildlife, and forests represents the economic value of the resources (Kealy & Turner, 1993). In recent years, economists and policy makers have used CVM to estimate this value and the other economic values.

Expended Abstract 1. Introduction The use of energy input in addition to physical inputs causes pollution and greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide. Therefore, the energy consumption in the process of production of agricultural products will be accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide. Energy consumption at all stages of the supply chain of a product is most important and its use is associated with externalities. These effects can also occur in the product distribution. Internalizing these external effects involves estimating the environmental damages caused by economic activities, so product prices are more transparent and can also cover social preferences after internalization. On the other hand, the lack of equality between supply and demand of food products in each region and the distance between production areas and consumption areas, trade, and its distribution become inevitable among different regions. Road transport causes side effects. Greenhouse gas emissions are one of its varieties. Wheat as the main product in the Iranians food basket devoted 51. 2% of the acreage to crops. This acreage in the 2013-2014 crop years produced 10. 58 million tons. Although that energy consumption in the transport sector in the period 2000 to 2014 has increased by 1. 86 times, carbon dioxide emissions has been at a rate of 2. 04 times. Accordingly, emissions increased according to per unit fuel consumption. As a result, taking environmental control policies in this sector become inevitable. The calculation of environmental impacts arising as a result of wheat movement can play an important role in managing green supply chain.

Expanded Abstract 1. Introduction The soil is the bedrock of all human productive activities and the foundations of many of the great and ancient civilizations that have maintained soil conservation. Population growth and shortage of new land for agriculture, large areas of forests have become degraded and transformed into agricultural land and, consequently, agricultural land has become industrial and urban. The major impact of land use change on the physical and social environment is an incentive for research in relation to the reasons for land use change and its effects. Modeling and analyzing these factors can help to plan and plan agricultural land. One of the issues have faced many problems in developing countries over the last few decades is that the growing urbanization and urbanization have led to the emergence of huge immigration trends in urban areas around the world. Immigration to cities in these countries has caused such problems as incompatibility in utilization, urban environs, and the lack of urban services to immigrants, the creation of marginalization, the destruction of agricultural lands around urban development, and the modification of its use to industrial and urban uses. In Iran, as in other developing countries, this trend has existed.

Extended abstract 1. Introduction Green plans are among natural blessings which have many functions toward air quality improvement. On the one hand, plants moderate the air pollutants by photosynthesis and beautify the cities. Many other functions have been found for the trees, of course, including the absorption of sound, water and soil pollutions. For this reason, in many nations, the creation of a green belt for inside and outside the cities has been set forth as a serious requirement but in the implementation of such projects, the species to be planted must been selected. The authors’ studies indicate that so far, no investigation has been done toward the selection of tree species across the city of Ahwaz [Iran]. This is a city with a hot, arid climate where the temperature rises to 57° C in the summer; and suffers from many environmental problems such as particulates and industrial pollutions. But the landscape planners in the city of Ahwaz are confused and occasionally, the expenses for planting trees are made with little efficiency. The selection of the best air pollution-reducing tree species may help policy makers toward optimal allocation of their limited resources. On the other hand, the budget allocated to the Organization for Landscapes and Parks of Ahwaz City Hall is not proportional to the economic benefits of the real interests of urban landscape. Achieving economic benefits of the best pollution-absorbing tree species may be used as a scientific criterion for optimal allocation of funds to this organization. Also, using the results of this study, the citizens’ awareness of the importance of trees is improved which could result in a more friendly treatment of landscape on their part and prevent the cutting of trees for banal reasons.

Extended abstract 1. Introduction Rangeland ecosystems have high capability in carbon sequestration, because they have taken half of the surface of the earth and their carbon storage accounts for 10% of the total carbon stock of biomass in ecosystems and 30% of total soil carbon stock. However, carbon sequestration capacity in rangelands is less than forests, but due to the large extent of these ecosystems, management of these areas plays an important role in the carbon cycle. For this reason carbon sequestration in addition to the protective value has an economic value and it can be as an additional benefit of destruction operation of destroyed lands. Destruction operations such as restoration and protection of vegetation of pastures to increase carbon sequestration in soil and plant has other benefits such as ecosystem services. To increase carbon sequestration in arid and semi-arid regions planting methods are usually used. Using bush plants by deep root can absorb water from deep soil which normally is not available by existing plants in this areas. Su-Yong and Zao (2003), Hill et al. (2003), Schuman and Derner (2007) stated management factors have an important role in soil carbon sequestration and the result of their research showed that under managed range management systems, total soil carbon sequestration has increased significantly in biomass, litter and soil. So, increasing carbon sequestration through vegetation regeneration is equivalent to increasing plant biomass, increasing production and improving land fertility. For this reason, basic and protective values have also economically values. Considering the growing importance of greenhouse gases in the world and the importance issue of global warming and increasing CO2 is not applicable to a particular country, there are a lot of ambiguous issues related to the ability of the types and different range plants in soil carbon sequestration and their economic value. Responding to these issues depends on extensive researches. Therefore, the present study aims to estimate and comparison the economic value of succeeded aboveground biomass of range plants.

Extended abstract 1. Introduction Land-use planning plays a vital role in achieving a proper level of risk assessment and risk management in urban development processes. Assessing the literature and experiences regarding the improvement of land use planning procedures is an effective approach to mitigate the risks of hazard in urban environments because of any land use planning that is based on risk assessment and prospective and preventive measures focuses on addressing the urban vulnerabilities and thus contributes to prevention or reduction of disaster impact. Therefore, the land use planning is considered as one of the most important urban planning principles and the main responsibility of city planners is to make prospective decisions regarding to the urban land-use and then monitor the proper implementation of these decisions. The last decade has seen a growing interest to the topic of hazard resilience. Researchers often define the resilience as the ability of a system, community or society to withstand the effects of a natural or social hazard. So, for a system to be flexible, it must first have the ability to absorb or deflect the impact of adverse event. By this definition, vulnerability and resilience can be considered as two opposite concepts: a system with greater vulnerability has less resilience, and a system with more resilience is less vulnerable. The land use planning can be used as an effective tool to improve the urban resilience. There is an extensive literature devoted to the topic of urban resilience and the assessment of this concept with respect to various deferent factors, and studies is conducted by Colton et al. (2008), Allen and Bryant (2010), Taylor et al. (2011), Ajiad et al. (2013) and Leon and March (2014). But the literature lacks a study on the topic of land use resilience specifically based on sustainable development approach. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to evaluate, organize and prioritize the urban land use factors with respect to their effect on resilience and with an emphasis on sustainable development approach.

Extended abstract 1. Introduction According to historical documents, up to the middle of the period of Nasir al-Din Shah, the growth of Tehran City has been along the eastern-western axis and within the fence of Tahmasebi. At the end of this period, with the demolition of the fence, the city's growth occurred from Darvazeh Dowlat towards the north and the Alborz slopes. But so far, the interaction between the Golestan Garden and Tehran City and the impact on the growth and development of the city has not been investigated. In other words, by studying the history of researches on the formation and development of Tehran, it became clear that no probe is yet carried out to find out the main reason of the formation and growth of Tehran with this perspective that the garden can be the main reason for the birth and development of the city as a part of the natural environment. Considering that in the architectural perspective of Iran, the architecture is born from the garden and comes from it, this important factor can be investigated for Tehran City and the effect of existence of the historical garden of this city which was not initially more than a theorem can be investigated. Based on studies from historical maps, the garden (Golestan) is identified as the primary core for the formation of the city and has affected its development and growth. Therefore, this article seeks to show that the main factor for the creation and growth of Tehran is the existence of the garden (Golestan) and there is a mutual relationship between the natural context and the garden, and the city and the architecture.

Extended abstract 1. Introduction The expansion of metropolitan areas has led to several physical, socioeconomic and environmental issues. One of the negative consequences is the intensification of urban heat islands (UHI) phenomenon in urban areas with more moderate climate. Studies on surface UHI have shown that in more arid environments there is a possibility for urban areas to have a lower temperature than the surroundings; a phenomenon that is called surface urban cool islands (SUCI) or surface urban heat sink. Studies on the SUHI have shown that in addition to spatial composition and abundance of land covers, the shape of a land cover and its relative placement to other land covers (spatial configuration) is also important. These studies have pointed out that the land surface temperature (LST) decreases, as the complexity of urban patches in more moderate areas increase. However, studies on SUCI have mainly focused their attention on analyzing the effect of time of data acquisition and also the influence of the composition of land covers on the land surface temperature.