GEOGRAPHIC SPACE
Year:2015 | Volume:15 | Issue:51|Papers Count:15

In this paper for the study of the amount of vulnerability of Iran to desertification we have used bioclimatic index of UNEP (United Nation Environment Programme). First average annual temperature and total annual precipitation has been collected from 45 synoptic meteorological stations for a 30 years period (1976-2005) from the Meteorological Organization of Iran. Then UNEP index are computed for all of studied stations. Using Mann-Kendall graphical–statistical test we then investigated UNEP changes trends in Iran.On the basis of UNEP index we observed that most areas of Iran have arid and semi-arid climates. With respect to the desertification intensity class, these two kinds of climates have classes of severe and very severe conditions. After those two kinds of climates, ultra arid, dry sub-humid, very humid and sub-humid climates cover most areas in Iran respectively.Results of Mann-Kendall test show that in three stations of Birjand, Tabriz and Mashhad, UNEP index changes trend have signs of tendency from semi-arid climate to arid climate. Changes trend at two stations of Urmia and Khoy have a tendency from dry sub-humid climate to semi-arid climate. Changes trend at station of Sanandaj has a sign of replacement between semi-humid climate with semi-arid climate and Yazd station shows tendency to ultra-arid from arid climate.However, Zabol station at north of Sistan and Baluchistan province has had positive trend, whose changes trends have been from ultra-arid climate to arid climate. Changes trend of all of these stations at level of are significant.

Planning for the development of marine tourism depends on a careful review and knowledge of the region and requires access to an outstanding model for analysis. In this study consolidated approaches SWOT- ANP for determining most appropriate strategy for the development of marine tourism in Kish Island. Since the SWOT model analysis is not suitable for internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) classification and the results are often incomplete list of internal and external factors, so it cannot comprehensively evaluate strategic decision making process. Therefore, in this study, in order to eliminate defects of SWOT model ANP technique is used. In fact, the network analysis between the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats establishes a dependency. Present research is applied in terms of goal and is descriptive-analytical in regard of study method and way of implementing. Based on research results, the best strategy for the development of marine tourism in the Kish island, is the strategy WO (benefit from political and management power to coordinate marine tourism related organizations, the development of marine transport in order to earn foreign exchange and investment capacity to ensure the welfare for tourists) and has the weight of 0/501. Addition to strategy SO 0.473 weights is an alternative strategy.

Over the past several decades, despite billions of dollars spent on various programs, the urban sprawl; has marked effective revitalization even more problematic. In fact urban sprawl and urban decay are not two spate phenomena and we cannot solve one problem without solving the other. Most cities nowadays suffer from these two problems and Maragheh is not an exception. The population of Maragheh raised from 100000 in 1986 up to 149000 in 2006 with an annual growth rate 2 percent .On the other hand, over the same period the urban area increased from 927 hectares to 2597 hectares with an annual growth rate of 5.28 percent. A simple comparison of population growth and the urban area growth from 1986 to 2006 indicates that development of Maragheh was sprawl and its share according to the Holdern model was 61.3 percent.Because of this growth, inner-city neighborhoods have experienced considerable out migration, flight of capital and economical activities, and growth of urban decay.The present paper aims to analysis past urban development patterns and their impacts on inner-city neighborhoods decay. It hypothesized that ''inner-city development'' would be the best alternative to urban sprawl in order to accomplish the twin goals of preserving of open spaces and natural habits and revitalize urban area.

It has been proved that Iran, except for the first ten countries in the world in terms of tourist attractions in the country its share of the world tourism industry is negligible. This research aimed at identifying the appropriate range of the potentials in attracting tourism and sports tourism in the province of East Azerbaijan. Method of study was Vamplew & Kay model, a procedure to examine the relationship between climatic elements with sporting activities such as swimming, sports, aerial sports, soccer, cycling, parachute games, both road and sports three. The results showed that in the East Azerbaijan province, May, June, July, August and September have suitable conditions for sporting activities available in terms of human comfort climate, the months of June and July for sports: swimming, football, cycling, sports, and aerial sports. The months of June, July, August, and September have a suitable climate for sports, swimming, soccer and three sports (swimming, cycling and athletics). The results can be well-planned and utilized by environmental planners and performance and greater efficiency in absorbing nature of the battalion, specializing in sports tourism guidance.

Life study is important, and this why this paper studies life quality factors that effect rural areas. The investigation method was survey and we used questionnaires for the research. The technique used was path analysis. Results showed direct and indirect factors that affect quality of life in rural areas. These results also indicated that there were many factors that affect directly the quality of life including age, time dependents, household wealth, satisfaction and rural crowd. There were many factors that also indirectly influence the quality of life such as distance between urban-rural, incomes, number of employed and type of job.

Due­­­­ to rapid changes in technology, and changes from local to global environment, cities have to compete with each other to being an attractive tourist destination. Today tourist satisfaction of tourism product quality at a destination is one of the determinant factors to successful in competitive world of tourism industry, which influences on goods and services consumption at holiday, reputation, trust, and future behavioral intentions (say positive things about destination, revisit, and recommending). In this regard, the purpose of this study is to evaluate tourist' satisfaction of the quality of tourism product and future behavioral intentions in El-Golu Park of Tabriz. The research is based upon descriptive-analytic and correlative methods. The study population (N) was domestic tourists in Golu Park of those two-hundred were the sample of the study (n). Moreover, the survey was distributed among the participants in convince method. Furthermore, the data was analyzed using SPSS version 22.0. The results indicated that; (1) there are not significant differences between tourists on attractiveness, interest to recreation, and safety of the Park based on Mann-Whitney Test and Independent Samples T-test, (2) based on the One Sample T-test, tourists are satisfied of facilities, accessibility, attraction, prices and image perception of the park, and (3) analysis of simple linear regression showed significance and positive influence of tourist satisfaction on the say positive things about destination, recommending, and decision to return. At the end, future researches should studied the relationship among the image of the destination, socio-demographic characteristics, nationality, ethnicity, length of stay, creativity, and communication and information technology with the future behavioral intentions.

Concerning the rates and changes in the properties of elements and physico-chemical characteristics of groundwater and describing prepared maps, they have played a major role in the quality management of groundwater resources, therefore based on this issue, appropriate measurement is needed to present for preventing excessive pollution of the aquifer area. There are various methods existing for monitoring and predicting the density of the physico-chemical characteristics of groundwater the selection of appropriate methods depends on the objective circumstances of the region and its data. In this research which was carried out in Plour plain located on part of Haraz-Polour river basin, sampling from qualitative chemical parameters was done and then nutrient concentrations such as nitrate, phosphate and sulfate in 37 different wells in the area were measured. Then using spatial interpolation methods such as ordinary Kriging (OK) geo-statistical methods and other certain techniques such as Inverse Distance Weight (IDW), Radial Basis Function (RBF), Local Polynomial Interpolation (LPI) and Global Polynomial Interpolation (GPI), we assessed the concentration changes in spatial zones for elements of phosphate, nitrate and sulfate.

The review and identification of potential sites for ecotourism users is an issue that has been of interest to tourism planners. The purpose of this research was, ranking the protected areas prone to rushes of tourism activities in the province. To investigate the factors associated with locating suitable areas, multiple criteria decision making techniques (SAW, VIKOR, TOPSIS and Entropy) were used. 12 criteria were defined. To obtain virtuous results, five important criteria including vegetation and animal life, infrastructure, willingness of local people, security and access to the area were selected for evaluation. The selection criteria for weighted entropy method and the matrix of paired comparisons were used. The VIKOR method was determined as the best option and SAW and TOPSIS ranking methods were used for the areas. Finally, the ranking of the three techniques were compared. The final ranking of the integration method with arithmetic mean was used. According to the entropy weighting method, vegetation index, and rank 1 and weight of animal LIFE 0.303%, were the most important factors in evaluating suitable areas. Also according to the above methods, Lashgardar Mala yer protected area was best known area for ecotourism activities.

Temperature is one of the most important climatic variables being effective in specification and distribution of other variables of climate and is one of the main components of the zoning and classification. One way to planning and management is based on the knowledge of the thermal properties and their coverage area. In this study, using cluster and discriminant analysis multivariate methods, temperature zoning in the North West of the country was done. Using Kriging, 720 monthly minimum and maximum temperature maps with 8×8 km dimensions were created. Finally by removing cells out of range, 2436 cells were obtained, and a matrix database was created in the R form in 2436 rows (cells) multiplied 24 columns (variables). By applying cluster analysis four different temperatures in the North West area using Euclidean distance and Ward methods was identified. Discriminant analysis was used for classification and testing the accuracy of the cluster analysis. Based on the results of discriminant and cluster analyses, the groups differ only in %1.6 of the area. This result of the cluster and discriminant analyses also show that there is not a very commanding difference. This can be confirmed with the results of clustering. Each thermal zone was named on the basis of the comparison of each region with Iran’s average temperature (18 ToC). These temperature areas are: Very cold area, cold area, semi-cold with cooler day and warmer night and semi-cold with warmer day and cooler night. The identified geographic areas temperature patterns which are more consistent with altitudinal levels unraveled that cluster analysis can be considered as a useful tool for zoning thermal districts.

The increase of soil erosion as a threat to human welfare and even for his/her life is considered in this study. Soil erosion protection from erosion to develop methods for sustainable management of watersheds is necessary. Due to the absence or lack of data on soil erosion and sediment yield of watersheds in many countries, the use of new technologies is necessary. The aim of this study was the application of calibrated Russell model parameters using geographical information systems and remote sensing to identify areas within the Sykhvran watershed. Results indicate that that there are more risks of erosion in the area. After creating a regression equation in hydrometric stations, rainfall erosivity factor (R) was calculated and interpolated. Soil erosion (K) was estimated to use the data. Soil and land surveying in the field were then carried out. Factor vegetation index using NDVI and length of shelves also were calculated through digital elevation model. Due to the lack of security operations in the watershed, we considered a factor equal protection operation. Based on the results obtained, the highest average annual erosion in Sykhoran catchment area was seen in the southern regions. The results of the correlation calculation of soil erosion and RUSEL model factors indicated significant correlation (R2 =% 82) with soil erosion. The results also matched with one of the region's solidarity sediment stations with %82.7. The application of GIS and RS technologies for quantitative estimation of quantities have finally proved soil erosion in the area under study.

Today the most prominent health and environmental problems of cities is ascending trend of solid wastes that should be managed and the institutionalization of phenomena such as recycling, composting, and biogas energy recovery from municipal solid waste be taken into consideration. By considering more than 65 percent of organic wastes in urban garbage in the study area, there was observed a need to investment in the production of compost. Process to determine the suitability of land for locating compost production units requires consideration of multiple criteria. That makes use of multi-criteria analysis models and techniques in this paper. The application of TOPSIS Model as one of the leading techniques in multi-criteria decision making has been examined in experimental field of research and resulting output has been presented in the form of classified spatial suitability of land for the deployment of composting units. Results of the research indicate that the pixels in the output map of the model which were introduced by priority, had the optimal conditions in terms of criteria that were considered in locating. Therefore, this model can be used as a Decision Support System (DSS), in the modeling spatial arrangement of compost production centers (centers for composting municipal organic wastes).

For vulnerability reduction of cities to earthquake hazard, such as Tehran city, it is necessary to adopt policies based on the accurate recognition of the nature and causes of vulnerability. The excessiveness of non resistant buildings in developing countries and cities such as Tehran, vaises the question that: Why the degree of seismic vulnerability of buildings, especially residential buildings, is different and high. to answer this question, the review of theories of vulnerability and disaster management showed that retrofitting and vulnerability have deep social dimensions. thus, based on the theories of social structure of vulnerability, the purpose of this research is analyzing the effects of socio-economic factors on residential vulnerability of houses of Tehran city. The research method is descriptive- analytical. Sample volume of households calculated by Cochran's method (325), and sampling was done by cluster method. Needed data gathered by household and expert questionnaires, and analyzed by correlation and linear regression methods. The findings showed that there are reverse relation between degree of residential vulnerability of houses and income -0.575, literacy -0.692, employment -0.825, socio-economic status -0.665, risk perception -0.326. According to the result of linear regression analysis, 83 percent of changes of seismic vulnerability explained. The Conclusion is that, residential vulnerability and retrofitting have deep socio- economic dimensions. So, for buildings retrofitting, in addition to technical and engineering factors, socio-economic factors such as poverty reduction and socio-economic empowerment of households and individuals must take in attention seriously.

Climate change impacts are very dependent on regional geographic features and local climate variability. Impact assessment studies on climate change should therefore be performed at local or at most at the regional level for the evaluation of possible consequences. However, climate scenarios are produced by Global Circulation Models with spatial resolutions of several hundreds of kilometers. For this reason, downscaling methods are needed to bridge the gap between the large scale climate scenarios and the fine scale where local impacts happen. A stochastic weather generator, however, can serve as a computationally inexpensive tool to produce multiple-year climate change scenarios at the daily time scale which incorporate changes in both mean climate and in climate variability. In paper, LARS-WG model were used to downscale GCM outputs and then assessment of the performance were done for generated daily data of precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature and sunshine hours. Study area is Ghare-su basin in Gorgan and the station is called Gorgan synoptic station. The first step is running the model for the 1970-1999 period. Then mean of observation and synthetic data were compared. T-test was used in the 95% significance level, and the difference between observation and synthetic data was not significant. Finally monthly mean of observation and synthetic data were compared using Statistical parameters such as NA, RMSE & MAE. As a final result, it is found that performance of model is appropriate for generating daily above listed data in Ghare-su basin. So, it is possible to predict the climatic parameters from GCM output using LARS-WG model. Also minimum and maximum temperatures have highest and sunshine hours have lowest correlation.

This Study adopted a scientometric perspective to investigate the publishing status of “Geographical Space” Journal’s articles in Islamic Science Citation center (ISC) during 2010-2014. The results of the study show that the Journal has published a number of 223 articles during the respective period. About 86 percent of the articles are the result of co-authorship, which reveals the fact that there is a strong bond among the authors contributing to this Journal. This is further confirmed by the value of collaboration index. The mean score of collaboration index in each document is 2.5. In other words, more than two authors have collaborated in producing each article on average. 57 percent of the co-authors have been from different universities, which reveals the lack of intramural collaboration among the contributors to this journal. Authors affiliated with Tabriz University produced 20 percent of all articles.