نشریه علوم و تکنولوژی محیط زیست
سال بیست و یکم شماره 1 (پیاپی 80، فروردین 1398)

Abstract Presence of toxic heavy metals like nickel in water resources is a major environmental problem in many communities.   In this study, to stimulate the removal of Ni (II) from aqueous solution by silica aerogel-activated carbon nanocomposite, the parameters affecting the adsorption process such as pH, amount of adsorbent, contact time, temperature and concentration were investigated and optimized. The results showed the maximum adsorption at pH= 5. The lower pH, the more H+ ion competing with the metal ion for adsorption sites. Kinetic studies indicated that the adsorption process followed the pseudo-second order kinetics. Moreover, the equilibrium data related to adsorption isotherms showed a superiority of the Langmuir isotherm compared to other models. Discussion and Calculation of thermodynamic factors, such as ΔG◦, ΔH◦ and ΔS◦, indicated that the adsorption process is spontaneous, endothermic and irreversible. The results showed that silica aerogel-activated carbon nanocomposite has been successfully employed for the removal of Ni (II) from aqueous solutions.

Food industry in Iran is one of the major energy consuming industries. Sugar industry and vegetable oil industry are one of the main energy consuming industries in the food industry. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the implementation of energy efficiency improvement measures in sugar and vegetable oil industries. In this study, it was attempted to apply SWOT analysis to develop strategies for the improvement of energy efficiency measures in the mentioned industries. This analysis includes the current effects (strengths and weaknesses) and the effects of future development (opportunities and threats). Also, the QSPM matrix was used to determine the relative attractiveness of the developed strategies. After examining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with implementation of energy efficiency improvement measures in the studied industries, the results of analysis by IFE and EFE matrices showed that strengths are less than the weaknesses and the opportunities of development are more than the threats. According to the results, development of strategies to improve the implementation of energy efficiency measures in the sugar and vegetable oil industries seems to be necessary. Among the strategies developed in this study, “establishing a proper system for policy making and implementation of policies, rules and regulations related to the energy sector and presenting a series of detailed rules for enforcing existing rules” are at the top of the strategyies

Abstract Irrigation of the vegetables by polluted wastewater leads to accumulation of heavy metals in these plants. Heavy metals fixation in-situ using inorganic amendments is a method for reducing heavy metals absorption by plants. The goal of this study is to determine the efficiency of five types of amendments in heavy metals fixation in the waste-water-irrigated soils around Tabriz city. For this purpose, solutions containing Cd, Pb, Cu, Ni, and Zn were added to 0.5 g of five amendments including calcite, hematite, zeolite, illite, and bentonite and to 10 soil samples taken from the nortwest of Tabriz city. After shaking for 2 hours, concentration of these five elements in the solutions filtered by atomic absorption instrument was determined. The mean percentages of these elements were compared and the best amendments were determined by Dunkan method. There were significant differences among the amendments in terms of heavy metals retention. Calcite had the highest Cd, Ni, and Zn absorption capacities; hematite had the highest Cu and Pb absorption capacities; and illite had the least absorption capacity for the five elemnts. Calcite, zeolite, bentonite, and hematite showed a significantly higher Cd, Ni, and Zn absorbtion capacity (5%) as compared to the 10 soil samples. The highest Pb absorption capacity by calcite and hematite (without significant differences) were observed. Discussion and Calcite, hematite, and zeolite had the highest absorption of Cu. However, the highest absorption of Cu belonged to hematite with a significant difference of 5% as compared to the other two amendments. Among the five amendments, calcite and hematite showed a similar results and led to a significant increase in absorption capacity (by 5%) for the five pollutants when added to the 10 studied soil samples. These ammendments led to the reduced absorption and accumulation of the mentioned elements in the plants cultivated in the agricultural lands around Tabriz city.

Monitoring of organic carbon in water resources is a critical quality index in environmental management, water quality monitoring and drinking water projects. In this study, the performance and applicability of artificial neural network and multiple nonlinear regression modeling were investigated and optimized for the prediction of dissolved organic carbon. Optimization was performed using backward elimination method with the highest probable correlation coefficient and minimum number of input parameters. Model verification showed a good agreement between the predicted organic carbon and actual observations. Results showed the acceptable performance of neural network model with the mean absolute error percentage of 7.6% and correlation coefficient of 0.91. Further investigations unveiled that although the multiple regression model, with mean absolute error percentage of 8.4% and correlation coefficient of 0.89, seems to be less appealing but its fast run-time and better performance in critical conditions makes it a better choice for the prediction of organic carbon in aqueous solotions with high range of qualitative changes.

Chlorophyll a is the main pigment of photosynthesis in water ecosystems. Measuring Chlorophyll a can indicate its biomass which is the real visible indicator for trophic level in water ecosystems. The objective of this study was to study the seasonal changes in chlorophyll a concentration in the water of Chahnimeh reservoirs in Sistan. The samples were collected from water of Chahnimeh reservoirs during four seasons, from March to October 2010. EC and pH of the samples were measured at the time of collecting the samples. In order to measure chlorophyll a, the samples were extracted and the absorption rate of the extract in different wavelengths was measured by a spectrophotometer model Unico 2100/visible/Uv visible according to standard method ASTM 8012. Then, concentration of chlorophyll a was calculated using the standard equation.     The range of mean pH and EC were obtained as 8.72-8.87 and 540-579 (μs/cm) respectively in the studied stations. The highest seasonal mean of chlorophyll a was obtained in summer in Chahnimeh 3 (2.17± 0.32 μg/L) and the lowest seasonal means of chlorophyll a were obtained in winter n in Chahnimeh 1 and 2 (0.82± 0.28 μg/L). The results of ANOVA test showed the statistical differences between the mean of chlorophyll a concentration in spring and summer seasons and the mean of chlorophyll a concentrations in winter and autumn (p<0.05). According to the Chlorophyll a concentration obtained and its comparison with EPA standard, it can be concluded that Chahnimeh reservoirs can not be classified in eutrophic lake groups of and they are oligotrophic reservoirs.

Electrocoagulation is an electrochemical process which is proven to be effective in water and wastewater treatment. In this research study, electrocoagulation method which was based on electron exchange, flocculation and flotation was used for the treatement of wastewater vrom E-PVC unit in Arvand Petrochemical Company. Most of the contaminants from this unit contain suspended solids, dissolved solids and chemical oxygen. In this study, the batch and continuous units of electrocoagulation process were built. The experimental design was carried out by Design Expert 7 software. Results of the analysis show that density of flow, number of electrodes and PH are the most important parameters. Time and distance between electrodes are less effective than the original parameters listed. In addition, the increased or decreased effect on efficiency of the surface response is evaluated. Results showed that electrocoagulation process could conveniently remove major pollutants from the E-PVC unit. The experimental analysis of the wastewater from the E-PVC unit indicate the proper operation of the electrical coagulation process. These results indicate that the electrical coagulation process can easily remove significant pollutants from the wastewater. The function of this process can be expressed as TSS removal: 84-95%, TDS: 51-80%, COD: 80-92%, OD: 80-95%, and TN and TP over 80%.

Tourism is a process with different forms for providing human recreation needs. The increasing critical pressure on urban and near urban regions can be the reason for this statement. In such condition, providing a master schedule at the national scale for each special regional condition is vital. Thus, natural resources conservation to ensure the sustainable development and to provide optimal quality for tourism services would be possible by paying attention to the carrying capacity. The aim of this study was to determine the carrying capacity of Berenjegan forest region in Chaharmahal-o-Bakhtiari province. The instructions provided by the International Union for conservation of nature have been used to determine the carrying capacity of the study area. The appropriate sites with the capacity of concentrated tourist attraction were pidentified to determine the physical carrying capacity. Then real carrying capacity in the concentrated recreation site was specified by determining the restricted factors in the region, as well as considering the related effect on the physical carrying capacity. Results of this study showed that the area of suitable site for tourists reception in Berenjegan forest region was 6.1 ha from 480 ha. Real value of the physical carrying capacity was calculated. The physical carrying capacity was 10457 individuals per day, 3816856 per year, while the real carrying capacity was 911individuals per day and 112053 per year. Real carrying capacity was less than the physical carrying capacity so that the number of limiting factors in the region could affect the real carrying capacity directly and it was decreased with the increase of limiting factors.

Nowadays, landfill method is used as the last strategy in the integrated solid waste management hierarchy. It is more common and has lower costs than other sanitary disposal methods. Selecting the suitable landfill site can prevent the inappropriate ecological and socio-economical effects. Landfill site selection requires the analysis of spatial data, regulations and accepted criteria. The main objective of this study is to determine the suitable common municipal solid waste landfill site for Khomeynishahr and its 6 adjacent cities. For this purpose, the multi criteria evaluation method, GIS and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used to evaluate the suitability of appropriate landfill site by emphasizing on regional vision. Different information layers related to the maps of the study area were provided and superposed using both the Boolean and fuzzy methods (classification of suitable areas in the valued range of 0 to 255) in the GIS environment. The AHP was used for weighing the information layers. After the necessary analysis, the proposed suitable landfill sites with an area of less than 1% were defined in 5 regions and in central parts of the study area. The results obtained from this study can be used as the first priority to help the decision makers in suitable landfill site selection.

Groundwater resources along with surface water supply the needs for municipal, industrial and agriculture uses, and their quantity and quality should be investigated. Salinity is one of the most important parameters in assessing the quality of groundwater. In this study, application of artificial neural networks and Bayesian network in predicting the electrical conductivity in 8 observation wells in Mazandaran plain was investigated. For this purpose, hydrogen carbonate, chloride, sulfate, calcium and magnesium were selected as input and output parameters for electrical conductivity at monthly a scale during 2003-2013. The criteria of correlation coefficient, mean absolute error and Nash Sutcliff coefficient were used to evaluate the performance of the model. The results showed that artificial neural network model has the highest correlation coefficient (0.989), the lowest mean absolute error (0.019 ds/m) and the highest standard of Nash Sutcliffe (0.970) ranked the first priority in the validation phase. The results indicate acceptable capability of artificial neural network models to estimate the electrical conductivity of groundwater.

Although poverty is a global problem, it is more dominant in villages of Iran. Dramatic and widespread changes occur every day in all areas of human life and the dominant culture in communities has has introduced rural entrepreneurship as an effective strategy for mitigation of poverty, economic development and sustainable job creation. In this regard, in developing countries, investment in green jobs and green entrepreneurship education can greatly contribute to sustainable job creation, economic and social development and environmental protection. The present study seeks to launch green entrepreneurship as a strategy for empowering the poor villagers based on the qualitative method and the Grounded Theory approach. Sampling method was of purpose-oriented type, and the professors of the faculty of agriculture in Razi University were selected and interviewed. Central questions covered in this study are: what are their views towards launching green entrepreneurship as a strategy for empowering the poor villagers? What are their individual strategies for launching green entrepreneurship? What are are the consequences of empowering the poor villagers by launching green entrepreneurship? Findings revealed that explaining the views of the professors towards launching green entrepreneurship as a strategy for empowering the poor villagers were "infrastructures creating green entrepreneurship", "green entrepreneurship culture", "supportive framework of green entrepreneurship" and "green products culture". The results showed that he consequences of empowering the poor villagers by launching green entrepreneurship from viewpoints of the professors were economic poverty reduction, reduction of unemployment, access to comfortable housing, life expectancy, reduction of immigration, empowerment, satisfaction and imrovement of level of life, sustainable food security, empowering and more importantly environmental protect and sustainable development.

Abstract Airports are the most basic parts of air transport system, and presence of new generation of modern aircrafts, rapid growth of traffic volume and demand for air travel, and adoption of coherent and precise rules and regulations for various stages of flight operations have made the airport a complex and dynamic system. The aim of this study is to perform management and land use planning using an environmental approach at Mehrabad Airport. The first hypothesis is that the airport surrounding areas are related to flight safety. The second hypothesis is that the use of the airport surronding areas is related to environmental protection, and the third hypothesis is that land management and planning affect the comfort and security of the people residing in the airport surrounding area. The study was carried out through investigation of the study area using Arc GIS 9.3 software to produce geographic position maps of the area, land use areas, and communication networks. Then, by adjusting and distributing the questionnaire, the effective factors on land use management were assessed and the strengths and weaknesses of the strategic management method were identified. The questionnaires were analyzed by correlation analysis using the SPPS19 software. The findings of the first hypothesis suggest that there is a meaningful and direct relationship between the parameters of "the airport surrounding area" and "flight security". In the second hypothesis, there is a meaningful and inverse relationship between the factors "how to use the airport surrounding area" and "environmental protection". The third hypothesis indicated the meaningful and direct relationship between the variables of "land management and planning" and "comfort and security of the people residing in the airport surrounding area". Discussion and  Results of the analysis show that among the respondents, most of the pilots (90.5%) believe that there is a strong relationship between the the airport surrounding areas and the flight safety. Only 4.8% believed that this relationship was insignificant. In contrast, 4.8% of the remaining respondants also reported this connection to be very much.

The level of human life has always been in progress with the development of science and human knowledge, but this growth has not been uniform in all areas and consequently different communities with different socio - economic development levels have been created. Using regional planning seems to be a necessity to reduce these inequalities. The goal of the present research is to assess and rank the socio – economic rural development level of Golestan Province townships. Entropy and TOPSIS methods were used to weight the criteria and prioritize the cities. Tweleve criteria in four main categories including population, transportation, welfare and healthcare were selected to measure the socio – economic rural development levels. The results showed that Gonbad Kavoos has the first rank with a coefficient of 0.92 and Bandar gaz has last rank with a coefficient of 0.12. After calculating the development rates, townships were divided into one of the high, medium, low and very low classes. Finally, sensitivity analysis with seven repetitions was implemented to ensure the consistency of the results. The results of this research can be used as a model to design proper growth and development plans for Golestan Province townships.

Abstract Population increases day to day and causes some difficulties which are more noticeable, especially in urban areas such as Tehran as one of the most populated cities in the world. Nowadays, these difficulties highlights the role of sustainable development. Needless to say, inequality in urban life is sign of failure in fulfilling of sustainability development. Based on multidimensional features of sustainable development paradigms and existence of different attitudes, it is difficult to have a perfect and multidimensional consensus in this field. Different attitudes and evaluation of sustainability methods signify the substantive dimensional issues such as environmental, social and economic features. In many societies, despite the resources, high-quality environment and high rate of social and economic features, failure in reaching sustainable development goals can be observed. Thus, it seems that investigation of of dimensions and indexes of sustainability and holistic attitude in this field can provide a new attitude towards societies. Attaining sustainability in this field needs a holistic cognition of the existing condition of the society for planning and giving strategies to reach advance rate of sustainable development in society. The aim of this study is to investigate the sustainability of urban life in Districts 7 and 22 of Tehran municipality with different attitudes by considering dimensions of sustainability in terms of substantive and procedural criteria. Substantive criterion includes environmental, social and economic indexes and these features not only exist in deep layers of society but also can change according to other conditions and are affected by sustainable development policy. Another criterion which is normally ignored in the evaluation of sustainable development, is procedural index which is formed by the indexes acting independently as a political process in society. In this regard, library and ocumentary studies, field observation, questionnaire and interviews were employed. The collected were analyzed by SPSS software and statistical method. The results show that District 22 is better in terms of both procedural and substantive indexes compared to District 7. Analyses show that District 22 not only receive high amount of investment in sustainable development by the local government (district municipality) but also supports some capacities which exist in the region. In addition to heightening the quality of management and local government, this district creates new capacities and helps in increasing the level of society.

Natural feature have a decisive effect on locating, growth, and physical development of cities. Natural phenomena sometimes act as positive factors and sometimes as negative and deterrent factors. The main objective of this study is to identify the geo-morphological features of Yazd city using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model in order to determine the sustainability of the city. To achieve these goals, the geo-morphological indicators affecting the growth of Yazd including elevation, slope, aspect, geology, morphology, and pedology (land units) over a 30-year period from 1984 to 2013 were identified. Then, using questionnaire, the importance of indicators in development of the city was specified. Moreover, the DEA model was designed to examine the efficiency of development of Yazd. Efficiency of the units was calculated by GAMS software. The most efficient units involved in development of Yazd were recognized using Anderson and Peterson model. According to the DEA model during the study period (1984-2013), development of about 16% of Yazd was found to be quite efficient. In other words, during the study period, the years 1985, 1986, 2005, 2009, and 2013 have always had 100% efficiency. The most efficient unit in Yazd, based on the geomorphology indicator, was observed in 1986. Since then, with the development of city mainly in southwest direction the efficiency has been declining. The results show that indicators of slope, piedmont plain sediments, urban areas are playing an important role in the development of Yazd city.

Teaching and learning of the main activities of universities and important pillar of human development are crucial and are agents of change and social progress. Social interaction and participation of students in the learning process, including factors that could be useful in efficiently universities. However, today the level of social interaction at university campuses has decreased. Several studies showed that the space should be eligible for optimum visual. Quality of social interactions to occur. Therefore, the aim of the research is to identify the criteria for visual quality educational facilities and investigating the extent to which these criteria is the social interaction of students leave.  The research method is descriptive-analytic survey and questionnaire is self-made. Required information from 300 students studying at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Golestan and were collected randomly; that visual quality with 40 items and six items assessed social interactions.  The results of the regression analysis indicate that between some aspects of visual quality including: diversity, conflict, unity, readability, sequence, charm, cleanliness and access has proven significant relationship with social interactions and the effect of them is different. This implies that, the interactions of students at university campuses these spaces is affected by the level of visual quality. The results of this study can help architects, designers and urban planners to design new spaces or development of academic spaces helpful.

In scientific sources, urban identity has been introduced as consisting of objective and subjective dimensions with different components which are manifested in perspective and image of the city. On the other hand, increasing the quality and beauty of the environment in the integrated spatial patterns will be an introduction to achieve identity in the city. In this paper, after identifying multiple dimensions of identity and investigating the components involved in creating quality and beauty in scientific sources and environmental design theories, it was attepted to assess the urban perspective identity in a part of islamshahr of user’s viewpoint.  The first part of the study focused on theoretical basis associated with the topic. In the second part, 250 of the users were selected to respond the questions about identity, and the obtained results were presented in qualitative and quantitative forms. Results from this study can provide a framework for preparion of the plan for re-organization of city identity and urban landscape in Eslamshahr and increasing the quality of urban environment. City is an artificial phenomenon which depends on human being and his activities and social relations. To define a city, its physical and subjective components must be distinguished. From this point of view, each city we can surveyed to become familiar with its difficulties and potentials. In this study, the difficulties and potentials of Islaamshahr neighborhood were identified and some solutions were suggested. In this study it was found that there is a direct connection between city identity and quality of environment. City identity affects the behavior of inhabitants and also is a basic factor for sustainable development. To solve the problems of Islamshahr paying attention to city framework, open spaces, variety of land uses, improving the quality of environment, and balancing the usage of building materials and colors seem to be necessary.

Abstract Recognizing the climatic potentias, as a basis for human activities, provides the predominant foundation for environmental and land use plannning. Most of the tourists follow climate considerations to choose the destination. The aim of this study was to evaluate and render the zoning of seasonal tourism at the northwest of Iran using tourism climatic index (T.C.I). In this study, to assess the climatic conditions from the tourism perspective, the climatic data from 22 synoptic stations in the northwest Iran for a period of 20 years (1990-2010) were collected. In this model, a 7-parameter system was used. These parameters included mean maximum temperature, average temperature, average minimum relative humidity, mean relative humidity, total monthly precipitation, sunshine hours and daily average wind speed. The TCI index was used for data analysis and the tourism climate maps were drawn for four seasons using GIS. The results show that the TCI index has a large variety of topography in the northwest because of conflicts over the years. Summer with the conditions as infinite ideal: 7, ideal condition: 10, excellent quality: 3, acceptable: 1 and very good condition: 1 ranked the first among other three seasons. Autumn with the conditions as perfect: 4, very good: 11, good: 3 and acceptable: 4 ranked the second. Spring season with the spesifications as very good: 2, good: 2, acceptable: 11 and insignifcant: 7 ranked. Winter with the conditions as acceptable: 1, insignificant: 14, poor: 5 and very poor: 2 ranked the fourth place and the most unfavorable condition among the other seasons. Discussion and Northwest of Iran with great tourist attraction can be pioneer in local and foreign tourism. Beautiful scenery and unique and varied climate conditions in all seasons can greatly contribute to the development of this industry and lead to great benefits.

Increasing environmental issues and crises in the world have highlighted the importance of discussions on environment and environmental issues.Since awareness-rising requires training and environmental training is the most fundamental way for environmental protection. The present study attempts to investigate the effect of environmental training on changing the students’ environmental attitude and environmental knowledge about environmental protection. The used methodology was quasi-experimental and the statistical population included all the 2nd-grade high school female students in District 4 of Ahvaz. The study sample consisted of 180 individuals who were selected based on random cluster sampling. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire and data analysis was performed using SPSS 21 software. Results obtained from comparison of three levels of attitude, behavior and knowledge in the experimental and control groups showed that there was no significant difference between averages points in the two groups before educational intervention. However a signification difference was observed in the students’ knowledge (P=0/021), attitude (P=0/042) and behavior (P<0/001) after educational intervention. The results show that theoretical and practical educations have a positive effect on attitude, knowledge and behavior of students towards environmental protection. Therefore, it seems that appropriate education of 2nd-geade high school students not only raises their awareness of environmental protection and efficient use of natural resources and the environment, but also paves the way for employing them as experts in the future to reduce environmental problems and crises.

Environmental education is a lesson for life. This means that environmental lessons must become practical in the social and individual behavior and daily life. What is noteworthy is the role of education system in teaching the environmental behavior through the textbooks from the early days of formal education. Thus, the purpose of this study is to check the content of textbooks general education with a focus on environmental problems and protecting the environment.   For this purpose, an eight volume textbook of experimental science of general educational courses for 8 grades were examined through content analysis in 2013 and 2014. In this study, using content analysis which has seven main components of environmental problems (air, water, soil and noise), protection of natural resources, waste separation and recycling, the role of human in the environment and 93 sub-component have been examined. The reliability of these tools was obtained to be 90.1% by experts. The findings indicated that the highest and the lowest attention to environmental issues in basic science textbooks have been payed to grade seven and grade three, respectively. In general, human role in environment received the highest attention and noise pollution received the lowest attention in the basic science textbooks.

Forests are considered as important sources of biodiversity around the world. Nowadays, forest ecosystems have the most important protective role. The forest ecosystems are the main habitat for many wildlife species that among them we can refer to the diverse species of the birds, including woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are considered as the indicator of the forest bird biodiversity. The elevation and forest structure are the most important environmental variables that affecting the woodpecker distribution.
In this study, three elevation classes were selected in the Shast Kolateh forest, namely 0-400 m containing parottia- carpinus- quercus forest type, 400-700 m including carpinus- parottia and parottia carpinus forest type, and 700-1000 m wherein beech trees were considered as the dominant species. The bird sampling was conducted using point count sampling procedure. The woodpecker species and the number of all observations in relation to each species in each of 103 sampling plots were recorded in summer and autumn.
The results of CCA ordination graph for three different woodpecker species with environmental variables and elevation showed that the most abundance of Black and Green woodpecker was occurred in 700-1000 m and 400-700 m a.s.l, respectively. Furthermore, there was no significant relationship between the abundance of Great spotted woodpecker and elevation.  
Discussion and The results revealed that the Great spotted woodpecker and Green woodpecker are more flexible in habitat selection and Black woodpecker unlike to the other woodpecker species is a dependent species to the forest habitats with beech cover type and mature forest structure, so it is essential to control severe exploitation of such habitats.