مجله جغرافیا و توسعه
پیاپی 28 (پاییز 1391)

During the history, human being has always been dependant on nature and environment for providing his main requirements, but during the time has caused many effects on the land because of their management methods and different interventions. So with regard to human beings potential capability, ecological capability has much importance for future development of land. On the other hand appropriate developments of cities depend on appropriate use of land potentials. Thus, identifying the potentials and capabilities of the area prior to its establishment and loading usages and urban activies has a great importance. Otherwise the development of the cities and inhabitats will be performed in a way that natural and ecologica limits will prohibit the continuity of activies and practically a lot of used investments will be lost. According to these issues, before any intervention in the land, ecological capability of the land should be assessed and regard to this capability and considering social and economic needs we should develop cities.The most important issue in evaluating the ecological capability of new town of Shahand is using environmental criteria for obtaining sustainable urban development. In fact it can be said that the main goal of this study is to determine the best location for urban development of new town of Sahand, which has had the least amount of bad effects in the present and in long term.

Alluvial fans are deposit landforms that their development is controlled by a number of factors such as tectonic, climate, lithology, base level change and morphometric properties of catchments. Among mentioned factors, tectonic has a major role in the fan development in tectonically active mountain ranges. The velocity of tectonic uplifting in mountain fronts can affect the rate of river entrenchment and the location of deposition in alluvial fans. When the rate of uplift exceeds the rate of stream-channel down cutting at the mountain front, deposition will tend to be focused near the fan apex. Climatic changes is also an important variable affecting the alluvial fans aggradations and degradation. In the wetter glacial periods, sediment production in the catchments of fans were increased and hence fans surfaces experienced aggradation while during drier present-day climate regime (interglacial period), fans surfaces experience degradation and incision. Although several works have been carried out on tectonic effects on alluvial fan development, little works have been done about tectonic effect on the rate of alluvial fan entrenchment in Iran. The study area is located in the south of Sarpole-Zahab town, Kermanshah province, in western part of Iran. 103 alluvial fans have been formed around uplifting Danehkhoshk anticline. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the uplifting effect of Danehkhosh anticline on the entrenchment of alluvial fans.

Although, villagers are the societies with simple social, cultural and economical relations, but in most of the areas, the existence of cultural, ethnic, and religious conflicts issues and more important, the intensive contrast of social classes has caused societies with its specific complications. For this reason, developing proper approaches for entering in to such societies is the main concern of programmers and policy-makers. The experiences of several decades of activities about rural development shows that failure of programs and unsuccess in accompanying people and their maximum cooperation in the plans and constructional, social, and cultural projects has a close relation with the attraction of villagers’ confidence. Therefore, it seems that if we be able to increase the villagers’ confidence toward programmers and policy-makers, a large part of these problems will be solved. The experiences of some successful plans show that the best solution for this problem is to involve practically villagers into planning, implementation and evaluation processes. The condition that is noticed in some projects, including the Carbon Sequestration Project (CSP), which is implemented in Hossein Abad of Sarbisheh region. The managers of this project who, through maintaining and reviving natural resources of the region, have intended to increase the current Carbon Sequestration realized that they cannot reach the targets without participation and accompaniment of people. This group, after studing the social and cultural condition of the region and observing weak results of previous plans reached to this end that they should concentrate their most attempts on attracting the participation of people. They found that they should make plans together with people, instead of for people. Also this research is implemented to introduce this project.

Hail is one of the most important climatic hazards in the world and Iran. Hail is a phenomena related to thunderstorm which occurrs in unstable atmosphere with high level of moisture. Hail damages human and agricultural products. The damage of hail is serious in comparing with tornadoes and storms. Most of these damages occurrs in agriculture sector and on the crops, so that sometimes all the annual crops are destroyed in a few minutes. Iran has a mountainous condition in Alborz and Zageos area that in association with climatic system creates a suitable area for hail occurrence. In order to prevent the damages of hail, it is necessary to study the frequency and other climatic features. In this study, the temporal and spatial distributions of hail have been investigated in Iran.

After several decades of struggle for development of rural districts and protection of water and soil of these regions, Unfortunately,The Poverty and jobless and damages to natural resources is further on progress in many countries, particularly rural regions of the developing countries. The reason for this situation is that, the index for poverty reduction, jobless and imbalance in development definition has not been considered for three decades (1950-1980) and the development has been defined only as a per person income. The surveys and different experiences in the far distance of the world, particularly in developing countries, shows that the reduction in poverty, reduction in jobless and sustainable utilization of natural resources in rural environment as well as a decrease in distance between poor’s and wealthy people could not be achieved successfully only by looking to agricultural problems. But a structural looking to residents in villages and consideration of all residents’ problems if accompanied with a progress in non – agricultural business and income creation, using all rural capability in the region, could be a good solution for rural problems. Therefore, in recent decades, the policies of the countries toward the different economic activities particularly in development of rural tourism as generation of a new income has been recommended to resist against the rural poverty and rural jobless. Attention to non agricultural activities in rural environment accompanied by social– economic improvement in rural families (those with no or less property and water) will bring a reduction in environmental hazards of the rural districts and also will reduce the urban problems of suburbs and environmental pollution.

Groundwater, which forms part of hydrologic cycle is a reliable source for supplying the water required by human being. The occurrence of droughts and heavy precipitations are the most important climatic extremes having both short and long-term impacts on the ground- water availability. The results of climatic extremes propagate through the hydrological system, including surface water and groundwater (unsaturated zone and saturated groundwater). These impacts include changes in groundwater recharge resulting from the erratic behavior of the annual and seasonal distribution of precipitation and temperature; changes in evapotranspiration resulting from changes in vegetation. Drought is a recurring, natural phenomenon, which affects every part of the hydrological cycle. Droughts are mostly caused by periods of lower than average precipitation and propagate through the hydrological system. Fall of water table and decrease of groundwater chemical quality cause secondary soil salinity, surface water salinity and reduction of soil fertility in arid and semi-arid regions. These phenomena, which salted soil and water resources, are effective factors of desertification in the world. Thus, spatial monitoring of groundwater chemical quality at the time of climatic extremes is necessary for stable management and planning water and soil resources in the area of exposed to salinity hazard. Continued and intense droughts occurred in Iran and Tabriz plain in past years (1998-2008). The impacts of droughts make dry surface water resources and bring down water table strongly. In Tabriz plain, Farmers used surface waters of Aji-chai, Komor-chai and snikh-chai rivers. Also, they used groundwater of plain. In drought periods, that precipitation declines and groundwater level falls, high exploitation of groundwater resources change chemical quality waters. Low quality waters aren’t suitable for agriculture. Also, salt waters cause secondary soil salinity in plain. Therefore, the aims of this research are determination of drought and wet periods in Tabriz plain by SPI index and spatial monitoring of chemical quality groundwater in the study years in Tabriz plain. Tabriz plain is located at the east of Urmia lake. Its west limit is salty swamps of Urmia lake margins. Moro Mountain is located in the north of Tabriz plain and Sahand Mountain is the south limit of Tabriz plain. The Onebne-ali elevations are forming the east limit of Tabriz plain. Aji-chai River is flowing in Tabriz plain toward Urmia Lake. Other rivers such as Saeedabad-chai, Mehranrud-chai and Gomanab-chai are joining to Aji-chai River. There are two types of aquifers in Tabriz plain (Confined aquifer and unconfined aquifer). Unconfined aquifer located in east, northeast and southeast of the study plain. There are confined aquifer and unconfined aquifer in parts of west. Unconfined aquifer into plio-pleistocene tuffs has high quality waters and located in North Slope of Sahand Mountain. The plio-pleistocene tuff is composed of red and green andesitic tuff admixed with large quantities of blocks, gravel and sand of volcanic and alluvial origin. Also, unconfined aquifer into alluvial tuff is the most important aquifer in the area has been known for many years as a good aquifer.

From geopolitic point of view, the underdevelopment of the border regions which creates basic challenges for country has a large amount of effects on the developing process of the country. Solving the problems of the border regions specially providing stable security in these regions is not merely a security and military issue but it is political, economical, social and cultural in nature. In this regard, the strategy for organizing and developing the rural areas in these regions becomes highly important. In fact, agriculture and its various activities have a special role in different economical, social and environmental dimensions of rural areas (Whelan, 2003:7). Lack of attention for assessing the magnitude of their effect decreases the agricultural potentials of the rural areas and if this process continues, the agricultural sector and therefore the social and economical stability of the rural areas will be destroyed. The scope of the activities in the agricultural sector in the country's rural areas in one side and the occupational and income dependence of villagers on this sector on the other side, requires the planners to pay more attention to this issue because the national development and the real economical independence of every region is contingent upon the agricultural sector.Many studies have been done by researchers about the factors affecting on the growth and the development of agriculture and each of these studies have pointed to particular causes and factors such as adverse geographical conditions like water shortage, lack of fertile lands and hot weather (Meijerink, 2007:47); focusing on all of the production factors and promoting productivity (Nin–pratt et al., 2009:101); technological development and local production, tax cuts, government investments on researches and infrastructures and the mechanization of agricultural sector(Chen et al., 2008: 581). Some researchers state that the public infrastructures have an important role in the development of agricultural sector (Mamtzakis, 2003:169), and some believes that the productivity of labor force in promoting the agriculture level (Baylis, 2008:75), and the integration of farmlands in order to increase utilizing mechanization and the deep development of agriculture by increasing the function and the intensity of cultivation are considered to be among the most important strategies for agricultural development by other researchers (melor,Gavi,1999:25).Others cite that the essential training for effective access to modern technologies and the farmer's awareness about the market conditions and their literacy level are the major factors in agricultural development and these researchers believe that those strategies which do not focus on human force are not successful (Stiglitz, 2000:552). Some researchers approve that the close relationship and interaction between researchers, county agents, farmers and policy-makers is of high importance in agricultural development (colemon, 2000:311). Physical infrastructures and technologies for achieving high rate of agricultural growth are considered to be essential by some other researchers (Ravallion & Datt, 2002: 383).On this basis and with respect to the performed studies and the spatial differences and various environmental factors and also for achieving a unit development pattern in each region and a comprehensive knowledge of effective and exclsive factors, in this research it is tried to study a special area (Hirmand township), in this regard, the current study seeks answers for the following questions:Do the effective factors in agricultural sector of this region have different impacts?What effective factors should be prioritized for promoting the agricultural level of this region?To answer the above questions, the following hypothesis can be presented:The various and effective factors on the agricultural sector of the region are of different level of importance.Among the different effective dimensions, production dimension and its indices affect mostly on the development of agriculture.

Sahl Abad playa is located at about 120 kilometers south of Birjand at Birjand-Nehbandan road in South Khorasan province. This playa is geographically located between 58o 40′ to 60o 10′ east longitude and 31o 50′ to 32o 15′ north latitude, the area of playa is about 1116 km2 (Figure 1). The study area is located in dry and arid climatic conditions. Since there is no meteorology station in Sahl Abad playa, therefore based on the figures of the surrounding areas, it is possible to estimate the annual average of precipitation of all the area about 150 mm (Eshagian, 1990).Formation of Sahl Abad salt flats has made a new ecology in the north east area of Nehbandan, in this area, extraction of salt storages and different kinds of industrial salts creates a suitable opportunity for sustained job opportunity in the deprived area of Sahl Abad. Therefore recognizing its geomorphology features and natural geography will be a great help for development planning of the area. It is hoped that this study leads to a better recognition of the said flat and be used in the studies for geographical investigations of the area, watershed management, flood control, exploring natural and mineral resources and other similar cases.Sahl Abad playa is an active sedimentary basin in quaternary. Geomorphology and morpho-tectonic of this playa and the mechanism of its formation are the main goals of the present study.

Determination of weather types as one of the goals of Synoptic climatology is identification of similar weathers variables. Hence, weather types in fact visualize air masses. In other words, a weather type is a different set of atmospheric characteristics which is different from other series. Today, identification of weather type based on climatic variables is one of the important tools for climatologists to understand about the weather and climactic problems & disasters due to atmospheric circulations. On the other hand, the weather types are associated with surface events and by identification of these, environmental phenomena such as floods, pollution, pests, etc, are predictable. Many of the processes concerned with environmental problems, are affected by atmospheric circulations. Since in synoptic studies, the relationship between changes in atmospheric circulation patterns and environmental phenomena and processes are reviewed, the results of these studies could lead to explain and predict phenomena and environmental conditions.Research Methodology In this paper, in order to determine and investigate the synoptic weather types in Ardabil synoptic station, 18 climatic variables such as wet and dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, direction & speed of wind (for 03, 09 & 15 GMT) mean of rainfall, maximum and minimum of temperature belong to Ardebil synoptic station in years 1978 – 2005 have been used. 9918 days has had complete data of the above variables. First, a P Matrix (9918×18) created and then the data standardize process has been performed. On this Matrix, by using cluster analysis, weather types of this station have recognized. based on correlations, 6 days selected as representative days of 6 synoptic types in Ardabil synoptic station. So, in these representative days, climatic characteristics of sea level pressure and 500 hecto-pascal geopotential height maps were investigated

Erosion and especially soil erosion can be considered as one of the most threatening factor for the environment in general and for soil and water resources in particular. Because soil is made from the composition of fine material, mineral and homos and its a natural-dynamic environment in which plants are grown. Nowadays, soil erosion is one of the problems and challenges which cause huge damages, particularly in Iran. This happens because erosion has many other consequences including soil loss and degradation, water pollution, reduction of water reserves and dams water filling operation, threatening general health and etc. Therefore, the assessment and control of erosion and its consequences can be considered as a major step for moving towards sustainable development. As a result, many researches and administrative activities are done and many models are employed in this field. Fundamental research related to soil erosion was started in 1915 for the first time and Wotiy was the first person who did comprehensive research in this field. Many researches also carried out in this field in Iran in general and in khorasan Province in particular and present study is in parallel with these research, because city of Mashhad is located in northern slope part of Binalood Mountain range, and it is surrounded by four river basins including Torogh, Mayaan, Dehbar, and Jaghargh. Unsurprisingly, the negative consequences of soil erosion in these areas have an impact on city of Mashhad and its citizens. This study was carried out to identify the details of this erosion in this area and appropriate ways to control it.