JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
Year:2020 | Volume:5 | Issue:7|Papers Count:13

Thermal energy recovery technologies used to burn solid urban waste are one of the relatively new and appropriate methods in waste management. Combustion causes waste to generate heat and gases that can be used to generate energy. In this study, the decision-making model based on the hierarchical analysis process (AHP) method for selecting the best thermochemical system based on three technical, economic and environmental criteria has been presented in Mashhad. In this paper, the thermochemical systems studied include waste incineration, gasification, plasma and pyrolysis. The data collection method was performed through a questionnaire. The purpose of this study is a comprehensive study of thermal methods in the field of waste management and the most appropriate choice of these methods in the city of Mashhad. Finally, it was found that plasma, waste incineration, gasification and pyrolysis methods are the most suitable thermochemical systems for energy production from solid urban waste and also in waste management in Mashhad, respectively.

Drought is one of the recurring phenomena in all parts of the world with high-rainfall and low-rainfall climates and it is consider as a natural disaster. Iran is also one of the countries which involved in this phenomenon in different places. Its characteristics, such as the severity, duration, and extent of the drought, are vary from place to place and its damages is depending on the country's planning. In this regard, the necessity of knowing the correct weather conditions and climatic characteristics of different regions have become clear to planners through environmental, economic, agricultural and industrial potentials and their optimal use, as well as predicting the occurrence of natural disasters such as floods and droughts. In this study, for evaluating and comparing drought and wetness events, the precipitation data for the period (1987-2017), as well as the evaporation and transpiration data and the number of rainy days during a statistical period of 10 years (2008-2017) were obtained from 9 stations in Fars province. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) was used, and the Arc GIS software, the drought zoning, evaporation and transpiration maps, and the number of rainy days in the province were plotted. In the studied years, Fars province has faced a near-normal state for 24 years in and drought for 5 years and wetness for one year. The drought situation was studied and analyzed in Shiraz city in the continuation. According to the obtained results, the drought in Shiraz city is more severe than the other parts of the province and it will continue in the future. The SPI index has the highest correlation with the parameters of the number of rainy days with a rate of (0. 46) and evaporation and transpiration with a rate of (0. 26) in 2012 and 2008.

The purpose of this study is investigation of the employment status of environmental and health graduates in Karaj Municipality. In the first step, frequency and frequency percentage of all employers at three levels of completely related fields of education (including environmental science and environmental health), semi-related fields of education and unrelated fields of education were investigated in three groups of central headquarters, organizations and regions according to the information received from the planning deputy of Karaj municipality. In the second step, the relationship between education and work responsibility of experts and heads of the responsible departments for environmental protection was investigated. The results showed that only 1% of the total personnel of Karaj Municipality have a specialty in completely related fields of study and 3. 1% of them were graduates in semi-related fields of study. Only 8 (16. 3%) of the 49 personnels with completely related fields of study, have been employed in their education-related responsibilities. The results also showed that only 5 (42%) of 12 heads of the departments or responsible personnels for environmental protection have education in completely related fields of study and only one of them were graduates in semi-related fields of study. This fact indicates the lack of attention of municipal managers to the existing organizational chart and non-regulation of the responsibilities distribution especially in the environment and health field. Based on the research results, reviewing and modifying the process of personnel recruitment and using managers and experts with a relevant specialty in the Karaj municipality is necessary as the first prerequisite for managing and preserving the environment to achieve sustainable development.

In recent years, the expansion of industries has led to increase industrial wastewater production and environmental pollution. Dyes materials are one of the most important pollutants in industrial wastewater. Today, dyes are widely used in various industries such as textile, paper, leather, printing, and cosmetics. Drainage of colored wastewater does not only affect the aesthetic aspect of the receiving water but also reduces the process of photosynthesis. Also, the colors and their intermediate products are toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic for aquatic life. Most of these dyes cause skin allergies, dermatitis, and itching, and accelerate the incidence of cancer and mutation in humans. Therefore, industrial wastewaters containing dye need to be treated prior to discharge into the receiving environment. The purpose of this study was to provide a summary of the most important industrial dyes, the health and environmental effects of dyes as pollutants, and to describe the methods for their removal from water and wastewater. In this study, different dye removal methods such as biological, physical and surface adsorption methods were described and the best process for treatment of colored wastewater was introduced considering the economical cost.

With increasing industrial activities and discharging untreated wastewater which contains various environmental pollutants to aquatic environments, problems such as reducing the penetration of light, anaerobic conditions and complications such as allergies and cancer for humans and other living organisms will occur. Surface absorption is one of the most effective and efficient methods for the removal of environmental pollutants and among the common methods for treatment of wastewater, applying natural adsorbents are more efficient than the other methods and is more economic. Since there are many natural adsorbents in nature, they are very inexpensive, they are even free in some cases; adsorption of contaminants by these materials can be a suitable way to remove the toxic substances of contaminated water and industrial wastewater. In this paper, we study some of bioactive adsorbents in order to remove contamination from industrial wastewater.

Rey city has experienced unprecedented urban growth in recent decades that leading to drastic changes in the land use of the region. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to investigate the changes in land use area of Rey city during the years 1988 to 2006 using aerial photographs and satellite images of Landsat and IRS. With supervised and unsupervised classification of the satellite images, 4 land uses types including urban lands, agricultural lands, green spaces and barren lands were extracted. Land use layers were compared in pairs and the rate of land use changes was extracted. The results showed that urban land use made and urban green space have increased 369. 7 and 55. 6 hectares, respectively, and agricultural lands and barren lands have decreased 213. 8 and 211. 5 hectares, respectively. The growth of residential areas during a period of 6 years from 2000 to 2006 totally with 212. 7 hectares has been faster changed than a period of 12 years from 1988 to 2000 with 157 hectares. A pairwise comparison matrix of land uses was used to determine the amount of environmental damages caused by unprincipled changes in the region land uses in the studying period. The results show that the conversion of barren lands, agriculture and urban green space into residential lands with the amounts 44. 65, 42. 44 and 14. 85 causes high degree of environmental damages. Land use change, especially the loss of vegetation, has a negative impact on the landscape.

Wheat is one of the strategic agricultural products in Iran and the world. Having statistics data and information about the area under cultivation of this crop and estimating the amount of its production in one crop year can help the planners of agriculture and industry parts in order to manage the production and consumption of the mentioned product as effectively as possible. One of the tools that can calculate the area under wheat cultivation in the shortest time and with low cost and appropriate accuracy is the remote sensing system. In this study, the area under cultivation of rain wheat crop in Sojasroud village of Khodabandeh city of Zanjan province was estimated using multi-time satellite images of Sentinel-2 measuring satellite and its results were compared with the agricultural cadastral map of 2017-2018. Supervised classification and two methods of support vector machine and maximum likelihood were used to extract information and by comparing the two methods, the most appropriate method was selected and suggested. The error matrix was used to evaluate the accuracy of the classification. The overall accuracy of the support vector machine method was 89% with a capa coefficient of 0. 80 and in the maximum llikelihood method it was 88% with a capa coefficient of 0. 79. The evaluation results showed that the support sector machine classification method has a higher accuracy than the maximum likelithood, so to extract the area under cultivation in the study area, the support vector Machine classification method is proposed. Comparison of the results of the area under cultivation with the statistics of Jihad Keshavarzi showed a deviation of 18% and the amount of wheat crop using the area under cultivation obtained by classification method was compared with the statistics of the Rural Cooperative Organization which showed a deviation of 17%. The results showed that the classification of the support vector machine is an acceptable and appropriate method for identifying and separating wheat from other agricultural crops.

Abstract Today, with increasing in production and diversity expansion of dairy products in factories and production of whey products, this food product has become very important. Whey is a water-soluble part of milk that is obtained by adding acid, heating, and coagulating the cheese. This yellow liquid contains a lot of lactose and mineral compounds such as calcium and phosphorus, which is important to achieve in order to use as a food source and prevent environmental pollution. Since the wastewaters of the dairy industry have the highest levels of contamination, if the untreated wastewaters of this industry are discharged, serious environmental problems will be inevitable. On the other hand, a reduction in existing reserves and environmental problems followed by increasing use of fossil fuels has prompted researchers to produce new sources of renewable energy, and it can be said that new biological technologies, such as the use of whey as a way to produce biofuels, reduces the environmental problems of dischrging this kind of wastewaters into nature. Today, using biological technology, these compounds can be used to produce biofuels such as hydrogen, methane, and ethanol. So far, various methods and tests have been performed to produce these fuel sources and in this study, the effective strategies for recycling whey and preventing environmental damages are investigated.

Hawraman area, according to the prevailing cultural and natural properties in particular is closely connected to the surrounding nature. In this sense, development plans tangible and specific impact on the social life. The main objective of this research is analysis of social and cultural challenges of Darian Hawraman dam construction. The present study was performed by descriptive survey method. The statistical society is Sirvan basin from Rudbar and Belbar village to the zero point of the border. According to the 43, 522 people directly and indirectly affected population, the sample size was estimated 364 people based on Cochran's formula which was chosen by Snowball sampling method and responded to the questionnaire made. Nonparametric chi-square test was used for statistical analysis of data. Chi-square test results showed that construction of a dam has a meaningful effect (P<0/05) on cultural and social dimensions. From the perspective of the dam construction respondents, it has created a serious challenge in the cultural and social dimensions. Due to the effectiveness of the desired dimensions of the dam construction it can be said according to the present study, the most important challenges created in the study area is a threat against Hawrama's n traditional, cultural and social and to some extent livelihood systems that leads to fear of losing identity, the loss of solidarity, and threats to horticultural, architecture and language systems. On the other hand, fading local customs and thus indirectly decline in social capital are the other bad consequences of the dam construction.

An ongoing ecological study of the Caspian Sea, in a particular distribution, identifying the species composition and regional variations, seems to be necessary before any study. According to this, in the present study, the type of dominance of planktonic groups in southeastern basin of the Caspian Sea (Golestan Province) was studied. For this purpose, sampling of planktonic groups was done once in September 2015 with 3 repetitions. The results of phytoplankton study showed that there are 4 orders, 4 families and 4 genera in the study areas, which constitute Euglenophyta (Euglena sp. 99. 9% density), Dinoflagellata (Procentrum sp. 99. 5% density) and Bacillariophyta (Diatum group. 100% density), the main phytoplanktons flora of the ecosystem, respectively. The Genus Euglena is the index of hypertrophic waters and is the first time that has been seen predominantly in the studied basins. The results of zooplankton study also indicate the destruction of this planktonic group (only 1 zooplankton of the species Keratella cochlearis from the genus Rotifera was observed), which is mainly due to the toxin produced by Euglena and the anaerobic conditions in the ecosystem. In general, the results indicate a critical quality status of the studied areas, the loss of high amounts of living fauna and flora and the dominance of toxic and inappropriate planktonic groups in the ecosystem.

Changing the use of urban green cover over time can create various environmental hazards for the citizens of a city. Due to the importance of the subject, the present study intends to investigate the temporal and spatial changes of green cover in areas 1 and 6 of Shiraz metropolis using Landsat satellite images during five decades (1972 to 2019). For this purpose, after performing radiometric and atmospheric corrections, maps resulting from plant indices including NDVI, SAVI, OSAVI as well as the maximum likelihood algorithm were prepared in ENVI5 software and classified and evaluated in Spatial Information System (GIS). The results of this study showed that the area of the green cover in region 1 has decreased in terms of hectares in NDVI, SAVI, OSAVI indices respectively and also in the maximum likelihood algorithm has decreased from 1394 to 428, from 789 to 421, from 815 to 419, from 1402 to 439, respectively and in region 6 was decreased from 1374 to 858 (NDVI), from 1160 to 862 (SAVI), from 1149 to 884 hectares (OSAVI) and in the algorithm, the maximum likelihood of similarity has decreased from 1393 to 855 hectares. Investigation of threshold values of plant indices to identify urban green cover showed that the range of threshold values in NDVI was variable from 0. 2 to 0. 3, in SAVI was variable from 0. 44 to 0. 47 and in OSAVI was variable from 0. 34 to 0. 36 and using Pearson test in SPSS software, correlation coefficient values between NDVI, SAVI, OSAVI, maximum likelihood algorithm and the studied years were significant at the 1% level. The results of this test also indicated that there was no significant difference between the results of these methods in this study. This reduction of green cover is considered a serious danger for the citizens of Shiraz.

Following the rapid economic and social development in recent decades, human activity to use natural resources has been reflected in the form of infrastructure and agricultural activities. This has severely affected forests as an important ecosystem which are considered potential environmental resources for future evolution. The purpose of this study is to detect changes of Guilan province forest levels during a period of 20 years (1996-2016), also modeling and predict these changes for the next 15 years using the geomod model. Landsat TM and OLI sensor images were used to prepare land use maps for 1996, 2006, and 2016 periods. Satellite images were classified into forest and non-forest classes using the maximum likelihood method and multiple educational samples. The geomod model was simulated based on the changes made in the period 1996-2006, changes in forest cover using the variables of height, slope, direction, distance from residential, distance from a road, distance from the shoreline, distance from forest, and distance from residential areas with implementation for 2016. The predicted validation results of the forest cover map in 2016 is indicator the overall accuracy and value of the kappa index equal to 94. 19% and 0. 9159, respectively. Based on the results of detecting changes during the study period (1996-2016), 1054. 97 hectares of forest area in Guilan province has been reduced and with the continuation of this trend and stable conditions in the next 15 years until 1420, another 871 hectares will be reduced from its level. Given the importance role of Hyrcanian forests, it is necessary to conduct multi-time studies to monitor and detect changes. Obviously, the information from such studies can be used in managerial and strategic planning.