Background and Objective: Biological soil crusts are a collection of lichens, mosses, fungi, cyanobacteria, etc. that are part of the soil ecosystem. Estimation of density and distribution of biological soil crusts in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, which is the subject of soil erosion and wastage is very important. Methods based on remote sensing techniques are important in terms of cost and time less efficient methods to achieve this goal. Segzi plain is one of the critical points of wind erosion in Iran and identifying and determining the distribution of biological soil crusts as a soil modifier is an effective step in reducing wind erosion in the region. In this research, BSCI (Biological Soil Crust) index has been used to prepare the distribution map of lichen-dominated biological soil crusts. Materials and Methods: The study area is part of the Sajzi Desert (Central Deserts of Iran) which is located in Isfahan province of Iran. The study area with an area of 199. 5 hectares is spread between the eastern lengths of 51o52'32" to 52o27'41" and the northern widths of 32o33'31" to 32o55'01". The average slope of Segzi plain is 1. 08 percent and its average height is 1680 meters. According to the statistics of East Isfahan Meteorological Station (Shahid Beheshti Station), the average annual rainfall in the region is 106 mm. According to the Dumarten climatic classification, the climate of the region is dry and according to the Amberge classification it is cold. The BSCI index is a combination of the relationships used to estimate vegetation and bare soil surface, and its mathematical relationship is the slope of the soil line. To calculate the soil line in an area, one must first separate the pixels that have bare soil and no vegetation. In order to calculate the soil line equation, in four seasons of a year, images of Landsat OLI 8 satellite related to 2018 were downloaded from the site of the US Geological Survey and 20 to 30 pixels of pure bare soil were extracted by drawing the reflection values of these pixels in the red and infrared band. Red near soil line coefficients were calculated for each season in the Segzi Plain. Based on BSCI index, lichen-dominated biological soil crust are identified using at least VIS-NIR spectral reflection and the slope between the red and green bands compared to bare soil and dry vegetation. Using ENVI software, the distribution shells of biological shells with lichen dominance were prepared in four seasons since 2018 in Segzi plain. Then, the prepared maps were validated based on land points and the total accuracy and kappa index were calculated in all four seasons. The collected lichen samples were identified based on their morphological characteristics and using a stereomicroscope, conventional microscope and common color reagents such as potassium hydroxide (KOH). After applying the BSCI index on the Landsat OLI 8 satellite image, using ENVI software, spectral profiles related to 4 points of Segzi plain in four seasons of the year were prepared and the spectral reflection in four seasons of the year in different points were examined. Results and Discussion: The slope of the soil line is lower in the rainy season, which coincides with the growth of herbaceous and annual plants, compared to the summer season, which has the least amount of rainfall, and the annual plants have dried up and become extinct. In May, the slope of the soil line was minimal (0. 39) and in late summer it has its maximum value (0. 78). In fact, the slope of the soil line has decreased from mid-August to May, and then has increased with the loss of annual vegetation and the increase of bare soil surface. The distribution maps of bio-shells in all four seasons of the year were validated during field visits and the year it was found that the highest accuracy of the map related to the map produced from Landsat 8 image is related to summer with 94% total accuracy and Kappa index equal to 0. 7412. Interpretation of the spectral profiles of the BSCI index shows that the reflections of the spectra related to the zephyr and strain prepared on the lichen dispersion points are very close to each other and also the spectral profiles of the mid-autumn and early spring are quite consistent. Whereas in the faults, which did not cover the biological crust, the amount of reflection was higher and there was a slight difference between the reflection diagrams of autumn and spring. Although the reflectance values of a range of agricultural lands and the distribution points of biological crusts are very close to each other, the spectral diagrams of all four seasons are very different from each other. But in all seasons of the year and in all places, the least reflection has occurred in the beginning of winter and the most reflection has occurred in summer. The climate of Segzi plain is Mediterranean and precipitation occurs in the cold season of the year. Simultaneously with the increase of precipitation from the middle of autumn, annual plants and mosses at the base of shrubs begin to grow and reach their peak in early winter and again at the beginning of spring. Decreases in rainfall have reduced their density. If the winter spectrum has the least reflection in all places. While in late summer, when the annuals and mosses have dried up, it has had the greatest spectral reflection. In Fasaran, which is a barren area and a landfill, it has shown its maximum reflection. Therefore, the BSCI index relative to the percentage of organic matter has a significant error in the detection of biological soil crust and where the organic matter is high may not provide accurate diagnosis of soil bioshells. Of course, since the BSCI index is defined for the detection of throat compounds in lichen tissues. The error rate for organic matter is reduced to a minimum. As it has been observed in the final map, there is no cover of biological soil crusts in Fasaran and only soil biological crusts are observed in the areas around Fasaran in the agricultural areas. In agricultural areas, due to human intervention and cultivation, the amount of annual plants is different from the field of natural resources in different seasons of a year have become. Conclusion: Spectral similarity of the most important soil surface, including vegetation, the involvement of human factors in increasing or decreasing soil organic matter, bare soil, etc. limits the efficiency of the BSCI index and therefore in the time period of satellite images and regional conditions have a great impact on It has the accuracy of BSCI index.

Study of Moho in Middle East and surrounding region is of great importance for scientists, because it has a rich geological history and contains parts of the Eurasian, Indian, African and Arabian plates as the main plates and some small plates. According to complexity and different tectonic structures in Middle East using a proper method that yields a Moho depth model which is in accordance with these structures, has a great importance. In this paper we compare the Moho depth obtained from two different methods, 1) Gravity data inversion of spherical prisms (tesseroids) and 2) Moho depth evaluation using tesseroids and CRUST1. 0 crustal model. Determining of Moho depth from gravity data is a nonlinear inverse problem. Regarding the extent of the study area we use an efficient inversion method (Uieda’s inversion method) in order to consider the earth's curvature by using spherical prisms instead of rectangular prisms. In this method one needs to minimize the cost function, where is the fidelity term, is the penalty term and is regularization parameter. In this method in addition to Moho depth, we need to estimate three hyper parameters namely the regularization parameter ( ), Moho reference level ( ) and density contrast ( ). They are estimated in two steps during the inversion by holdout-cross validation methods. To estimate the relief of the Moho from gravity data, first one must obtain the gravitational effect of the target anomalous density distribution attributed to the Moho relief, this requires eliminating all gravity effects other than that of the target anomalous density from observed data. In the first method tesseroid modeling is used to calculate the gravity effect of the topography and sediments. The effect of topography and crustal sediments are removed using global topography and crustal models. In the second method first we extract Moho depth over the study region from CRUST1. 0 model and then evaluate gravity effect arising from this anomalous Moho, then using inversion method to estimate the Moho depth from CRUST 1. 0 model. According to the results, the minimum depth of Moho is about 12 km in some parts of Indian Ocean and the maximum depth is about 54 km in the west of Tibetan plateau from the first method which is in accordance with plate boundaries and correlates well with the prominent tectonic features of the Middle East region. The Moho depth obtained from the second method varies between 7. 5 and 49 km where the minimum depth is related to the parts of Indian Ocean and maximum depth is appeared in parts of the Zagros in Iran. Comparing the results of two methods demonstrates the acceptable performance of the adapted inversion procedure and utilization of spherical prisms but the calculated Moho depth from second method failed to estimate acceptable Moho depth especially in divergent boundary at Red sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. The results indicate that the CRUST1. 0 model, at least over an area with large extent, is not a suitable model for gravity inversion and Moho depth estimation.

Desert pavement and playa crusts serve as resistant layers that protect underlying soil and sediment materials. When these protective layers are disrupted by human activities, the exposed fine particles become highly susceptible to wind erosion. This research aimed to evaluate the erodibility potential of three layers: sub-pavement soil in the pediment, sub-crust deposits, and playa crust. We assessed erodibility using soil texture characteristics, grain granulometry, and chemical properties including Electrical Conductivity (EC), Exchangeable Sodium Percentage (ESP), and Electrochemical Stability Index (ESI). Results indicate that the dominant granular category ranges between 250-500 microns in pediment samples, while playa samples exceed 500 microns. Particle size analysis reveals medium-to-fine sand in all pediment samples versus medium-to-coarse sand in playa samples, demonstrating finer particles in the pediment. Approximately 60% of all samples exhibited Sandy Clay Loam texture. Chemical analysis showed significantly higher mean values of EC, SAR, and ESP in playa crust compared to subsurface soil and deposits. The mean ESI values were 0. 81 (playa crust), 0. 67 (sub-crust deposits), and 0. 10 (sub-pavement soil). Data analysis established the following wind erodibility sequence: sub-pavement soil > sub-crust deposits > playa crust.

In order to study the crust in Azarbaijan area, 2654 earthquakes data recorded in 8 stations of Azarbaijan network, during 3.5 years, are processed. 42 earthquakes of the recorded data occurred in this area. By making 42 profiles, including one source and two stations, P-wave travel times are calculated. Then by choosing an initial three-layer model, Depth and velocity parameters of each layer are optimized. The results of optimization are used for contour map plots of velocity and depth variations. Velocity discontinuities and sudden variation in depth, observed on the maps, are related to the faults in the area. Velocity variations with depth were 3.5-7.5km/s and depth variations of first and second interface respect to the surface were 4.5-6km and 18-22km respectively.

IntroductionCrusts are a hard layer on surface soil, that is formed by disaggregation– aggregation process in which particles of soil, air, water, and organic matter are connected to each other and classified into different types including physical, chemical, and biological. Chemical crusts like salt crusts are formed due to intense evaporation on the surface of extremely salty soils. Physical crusts are formed raining or through irrigation of agricultural lands and are divided into three categories including structural, erosional, and sedimentary, depending on the process of their formation. The biological crust which is formed by the function of algae, cyanobacteria, mosses, and lichens, and due to their positive protective roles and restoration ability received much attention so far. However, studies on the effects of non-biological crust and their protective role have been considered less. Various effective factors on crust strength have been investigated but land use has been left out. This research has focused on modeling land use effection crust strength, in dust emission sources in the southeast of Ahvaz. Materials and Methods In the south-eastern of Ahvaz in Khouzestan province, three land uses including agriculture, agroforestry, and barren land were selected. In order to measure the strength of the surface crust in selected land uses, a handheld penetrometer was used and crust strength was measured in random points in 30 points in each land use. To reduce the influence of other environmental conditions, measurements were done scattered on each land use. Then, to obtain the strength in one point, three measured points were averaged, and finally, 90 measured points were obtained for each. The surface soil moisture of land uses was done by taking soil samples and measuring in the laboratory, and then significant differences between land use groups were tested by analysis of variance. Normality and homogeneity of variances were tested by using the Kolmogrove-Sminov and Levene's tests on soil strength data set. Due to the fact that the soil texture is different in studied land uses and also the soil texture is one of the most important factors affecting the strength of crust in the measured points, the soil texture was extracted from the existing maps. In order to investigate the effect of these two independent factors on the crust strength as well as their interaction, General Linear Modeling (GLM) was chosen to exclude the soil texture effect on crust strength variation and model the land use effects. Results and Discussion Results showed that soil surface moisture does not have a significant difference in land use groups. By using the General linear model, crust strength was modeled. In the first stage, the effect of land use and soil texture were investigated as the most important factors affecting the hardness of the crust and the results showed that land use and soil texture as well as their interactions are effective in changing the hardness of the crust at the level of 95 % and 99 %, respectively. These factors have an effect on the variance of crust hardness, but the main source of variance is land use, and this factor alone explains about 78 % of the crust strength variance, and the model explains 96 % of the variance of the dependent variable and the presented model is significant at the level of 99 %. In order to check the existence of a significant difference in crust strength in studied land uses, Helmert's Contrast and Bonferroni tests were used. The result showed that there is a significant difference in the average crust strength of barren lands with agriculture and agroforestry at the 99 % level, and no significant difference is observed between agriculture and agroforestry. Then, in order to investigate the single factor of land use, the soil texture was considered as covariance, and its effect on the hardness of the crust was removed. The results showed that there is a significant difference in the average hardness of barren land use with agriculture and agroforestry at the level of 99 %. The presented model explains 86 % of the variance of the hardness of the ridge, and among the factors with a significant level, 99 % of the hardness of the crust in a barren land with 70 % partial effect has the largest role in explaining the variance. With the change of land use from agroforestry to barren land, the hardness of the soil surface increases by 50 %, and with changing to agricultural land, it decreases by 14 %. Conclusion In agricultural and forestry land uses, with the increase in the traffic of people and heavy machinery, the crust is broken and does not return to its original strength. Based on these results, it can be said that in desert areas, vegetation conservation is not the only way to protect soil from wind erosion, but protecting the crust against traffic and breakage can be an efficient solution that has received less attention. Legal confrontation with land use change and land plowing can be a sustainable solution for these areas. It is suggested that with a general assessment of the surface strength of the crust on bare land, easily can be protected against the wind only with management practices.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Herbal medicine had been excessively used for treatment of many diseases in traditional medicine. Because of effect of fructose on lipid profile and hepatic enzymes, it was decided to study the effect of extract of different parts of Citrullus colocynthis on lipid profile and hepatic enzymes in fructose-fed male rats.METHODS: In this experimental study, 63 adult male Wistar rats weighting 200-300 (g) were used. After fructose 10% induced in drinking water for 8 weeks, the animals were randomly divided into 7 groups: control, Fructose10%, aqueous extracts of seed, hydro-alcoholic extracts of seed, aqueous extracts of crust, hydro-alcoholic extracts of crust and hydro-alcoholic extracts of pulp. The extracts (200mg/kg) were administered orally and conducted for 2 terminal weeks. The animals were weighed and anesthetized for the serum blood collection to determine lipid profile and hepatic enzymes after at least a 12-h fast with manufacture kits and autoanalyzer machine.FINDINGS: LDL/HDL ratio in aqueous extracts of crust group (2.46±1.08) increased in comparison with control and fructose groups (0.98±0.1 and 0.98 ± 0.15, respectively) (p<0.01). Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in aqueous extracts of seed and aqueous extracts of crust groups decreased and increased in comparison with control and fructose groups, respectively (p<0.05). Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in aqueous extracts of crust group increased in comparison with control and fructose groups (p<0.01), also alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in aqueous extracts of crust group increased (p<0.05) but this enzyme in aqueous extracts of seed group decreased significantly in comparison with control (p<0.01) and fructose (p<0.05) group.CONCLUSION: According to the results, crust of Citrullus colocyn this has negative effect on lipid profile, hepatic enzymes and hepatotoxicity and seed of this fruit has decrease effect on lipid profile and hepatic enzymes.

Alborz mountain belt in the North of Iran is known as a tectonically and seismically active region. Determination of shear wave velocity structure is important to interpret the tectonic activities. In this study, we determine 1D shear wave velocity structure beneath 12 seismic stations in the Eastern part of Alborz and also 2D shear wave velocity structure along to two profiles (one is along to the trend of Eastern part of Alborz and another one is perpendicular to its trend), based on the joint inversion of Pwave receiver function (PRF) and dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves. To obtain the PRFs of each seismic station, we lonsider three-component body wave seismograms of 177 teleseismic earthquake events with magnitude Mw>5.2 and epicentral distance range 30° to 95°, related to the study region. Also the dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves in the vicinity of each station are extracted from surface wave tomographic study reported by Rahimi et al. (2014). Then these two group data are regarded as the input data for the joint inversion process using “joint96” program (Herrmann and Ammon, 2007).). In this study, the initial models are taken from shear wave velocity models reported by Rahimi et al. (2014), based on tomographic inversion of Rayleigh wave dispersion for various tectonic region of Iran. We regard the maximum depth of investigation about 300 km (upper mantle) in this joint inversion process based on sensitivity kernels of the dispersion curves of the Rayleigh wave fundamental mode with respect to the shear wave velocity at different periods (Rahimi et al., 2014). To find the most robust final velocity model for each station, we regard two stability tests: first, searching for the optimal parameterization for the joint inversion process; second, simplify of the representative solution of the joint inversion process (Motaghi et al., 2015). According to the obtained results, the depth of Moho boundary beneath the eastern part of Alborz mountain range is relatively uniform and following 47±2 km. By attention to the absolute shear wave velocity structure along the two profiles, depth of lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary beneath covered area is roughly constant and mainly varies around 86±6 km. Also there are high velocity anomalies in depth range 120-180 km. These high velocity anomalies in the upper mantle are consistent with the presence of under thrusting of Caspian lithosphere beneath Alborz. This observation is reported previously by Jackson et al., 2002. These observations may support the remaining question about higher surface topography in the study region without enough supporting crustal thickness. Maggi et al. (2000), using the admittance between topography and gravity in frequency domain mentioned that the only very short period topography could be supported by the flexure of the layer, whilst any longer period topography must be supported by an isostatic response. This result supports our observations, which shows an isostatic compensation for much of the long period topography. On the other hand, for short period topography, the mechanism of elastic flexure layer beneath Alborz, allowing high topographies to be supported by thin crust. We observed almost well correlation between the thickness of high velocity under thrusted layer and surface topography and also our observation could support higher surface topography in study region without enough supporting crustal thickness.

In the context of shell theory in continuum mechanics, based on three-dimensional displacement fields and assuming height as a differentiable function of the geodetic surface coordinates; analytical surface deformation theory provides a method for analyzing the contemporary state of surface deformation of the Earth''s crust using differential geometry. In this method, based on finite elements representation of the Earth''s crust (Delaunay triangulation); deformation analysis is based on a two-dimensional computational approach: Gaussian and mean curvatures are computed using metric tensor and the second fundamental form. Variations of the mean and Gaussian curvatures in Makran, 0.503×10-14/myr and 1.097×10-21/m2yr respectively, obtained from the Iran global GPS campaigns (epochs 2001 and 2005) are a signature for the subduction process in this area. Moreover, maximum change in the curvature are in accord with the main Zagros and Alborz (+1.574×10-21/m2yr and-9.992×10-21/m2yr) folds in Iran. Frequently; the subsidence paths in precise leveling network of Iran are in areas with reduction in curvature.