مهسا عبدالشاه نژاد

The importance of paying attention to sustainable development and biosafety in areas that effected by an environmental disaster such as dust storms has increased the need for new methods to find coping strategies. For this purpose, cross-structural analysis is an effective tool for studying system behavior. Based on the results of structural analysis and future study approaches, stability strategies can be proposed in the affected area by high-risk dust. The method of the research is according to the applied and future study approach. The sample population of this research was composed of 22 experts and managers in the field of agriculture and dust. Based on collecting data through expert interview and brainstorming method, the effective drivers were identified. According to the opinion of experts, the final drivers were extracted as a 26 × 26 matrix. Then, the cross-impact matrix was scored by experts. To determine the key drivers affecting the resilience of farming communities affected by dust in Ahvaz County, the future research approach was performed using MICMAC software in three groups of economic, social, and natural-physical components and 26 indicators. Research variables were divided into three categories »key, Independent and Regulative« based on the degree of relationship between influence and dependence. Key drivers include »Change of Quality and Quantity of Agricultural Products, Income Risk, Unemployment and Poverty Rise, Access to Financial Credits, Alternative livelihood and Immigration«. The results showed that the system of this study is unstable and in order to make management decisions and increase sustainability, it is necessary to develop strategies based on key drivers affecting farmer’s resilience.

In last decade, increasing of environmental issues such as the occurrence dust storms, have caused concern among planners. To this purpose, it is important to provide a method for control and combat with it .Therefore, Risk assessment can help planners as a key and effective way of preparing programs and adopting dust management strategies. Therefore, it is necessary to identify a standard framework for finding resilient and vulnerable groups. In order to provide an appropriate framework to the dust risk assessment, first the theoretical foundations of vulnerability, adaptability and resilience was investigated, then Resilience assessment tools were prioritized. The statistical population of this research are experts and relevant specialist and for the evaluation of tools, the TOPSIS method has been used. The results of this study show that the CoBRA framework is priority to other tools based on five criteria (access to data source, quantification and qualification potential, including five basic capitals, different spatial and temporal scales and threshold. Therefore, CoBRA is the main basis for the conceptual framework of this study. Because it involves Social, human, physical and natural capitals, Also the degree of vulnerability based on adaptive capacity, sensitivity and exposure and the degree of resilience based on physical, human, financial, natural and social resources are estimated. The conceptual framework and results presented in this study could be the basis for assessing dust risk in the affected areas.

Greenhouse gases have continued to increase in the atmosphere. This is largely due to industrial activities. The warming effect of greenhouse gas, increased over the last 200 years, due to carbon dioxide; hence the temperature of the lower levels of atmosphere will be increased. The climate change across the world resulted in an increased drought; disturbance in rainfall as well as desertification. Desertification has been caused by a variety of factors such as climate change. It is a significant natural resources problem. The aim of this study was to evaluate the desertification during five periods (1978-1987, 1978-2007, 2012-2041, 2042-2071, and 2072-2101) during the last, present, and future, using IMDPA model as well as climate and geology-geomorphology criteria. For each criterion, some indexes were selected, using area condition. First, air temperature and precipitation during the previous time was evaluated. Then, the climate change was estimated using two climatic models of HADCM3 and GFDL2.1 and three scenarios of A2, B1 and A1B of GCM as well as small scale exponentially. The land use map for four classes in two periods (1986 and 2010) was prepared and used for input data to the Markov chain for estimating future land changes through the three periods (1419, 1449, and 1479). Results were used as the land use index for working unit in geology-geomorphology criterion. It was assumed that the tolerance of stone to the erosion and slope of maps were constants. Hence, this criterion was studied during five periods. Results showed that the intensity of desertification was increased during the time.

The effects of human activities on the land use and landscape and its subsequent effects on the natural environment have always been considered. Therefore, to have a sustainable landscape planning, knowing about such changes would be essential. Satellite images of TM sensor in 1990, ETM+ Sensor in 2002 as well as OLI Landsat 8 in 2013 were used to investigate the trend of changes and preparation of cover maps. The executive phase of the study included the analysis of the gradient of land use structure in eight geographical directions for class area (CA), number of patch (NP), and mean patch size (MPS) in seven classes such as woodland) low-density forest and garden), water zone, agriculture, bare land,  rangeland, urban and sand dunes. The results showed that the land use of woodland, urban, and sand dunes had an increasing trend, while the bare land showed a decreasing trend. The results of gradient analysis of land use structure in eight geographical directions indicated that the most changes were in the west and center of the region. Based on the analysis of changes rate of metrics, the most changes were recorded for rangeland, bare land, and urban during 1990 to 2002; the woodland, agriculture, and urban during 2002 to 2013; and rangeland, woodland and urban during 1990 to 2013. Therefore, given that some aspects of land use change depend on human aspects, the relationship between these quantitative indicators can be used to determine the sustainability level as well as the future trend of land use change to identify the critical affected areas. Metrics of area, number of patches and mean patch size were recognized as the important indices in discussions of monitoring land use and mosaic changes.

The study of soil quality is important to identify the different management effects on natural resources and agricultural farmland. In this research soil quality index was evaluated in two depth of six land use of Shahryar region through physical and chemical attributes and multi variate data analysis. For this purpose six different land uses/management were selected including rangelands (wild, exclosure and, grazing) and agriculture (Pistachio garden, alfalfa and wheat cultivation). A systematic-random strategy was carried at 0-15 cm and 15-30 cm depth by and soil properties were measured in the laboratory (98 samples). The soil attributes include: texture, bulk density, water holding capacity, permanent wilting point, field capacity, electrical conductivity, pH, organic carbon, total N, lime, P, K, Na, K and SAR. Statistical analysis shows that, soil properties were grouped into five significant factors for the 0-15 cm depth as: 1-soil salinity, 2- soil nutrients, 3-soil texture, 4- soil phosphor and 5-soil humidity. Factor 1 was known as the most dominant and potassium element (K) contributed the largest factor loading. In 15-30 cm depth, four significant factors were identified (1) salinity; 2) humidity; 3) texture and 4) phosphor). While, in15-30 cm depth, factor 1 was distinguished as the most dominant and SAR and Ec known as the most effective variables for soil attribute. Generally, results indicated that soil salinity factor was the most important factor for soil quality assessment.

Achieving integrated natural resource management fundamentally needs effective and coordinated relationship, collaboration, and synergy among various actors who have common but different responsibilities. In this sense, the foundation of comprehensive and integrated management is not compatible with centralization and top-down strategies. The aim of this paper is analysis of network and organizational cohesion of natural resources stakeholders in Semnan province. In this study, relations of existing organizations within the network have been investigated based on inter-organizational information transfer and collaboration through social network analysis method and applying macro-level and middle indexes of institutional network including; the network size, density, ties reciprocity, and centralization at macro-level and core-periphery index at middle level. Policy monitoring emphasized in present paper’s title refers to this question that how successfully natural resource integrated management policies have been realized at least within the fourth and fifth development programs. Therefore, present study is an attempt to address this question quantitatively and relying on the results of indexes of structural analysis of natural resource stakeholders’ network in the pilot area. The results of this study indicate that institutional cohesion is 40 percent (poor) and sustainability of institutional network based on reciprocity is about 47 percent (medium). Additionally the core-periphery index showed that the density of institutional network of Semnan province in core actors’ subgroup is 77 percent and in periphery actors’ subgroup is 25 percent. Research findings identify existing capacities for applyin integrated natural resources management and reveal the necessity of reducing network centralization and strengthening the relationship among various stakeholders of this section.

If the wind speed got faster than soil erosion threshold and soil surface with plants, residuals and surface roughness are protected, then the process will lead to wind erosion. The necessity of estimation of erosion in soil protection planning is important issue and there are different methods for estimation of erosion which have presented in current study. The rate of erosion and sedimentation of different work units (salty pan land, puffy land, arable and reforested saxual and eroded marls) were analyzed via IRIFR and RWEQ. Comparing of the results of two models showed that the general trend of erosion on studied faces was nearly the same (i.e. it was maximum in salty pan land faces while minimum in wheat farm lands) but numeral values of wind erosion in RWED model in some faces were less than the results of IRIFR and in others were higher. This different is mainly due to the technological variation in wind erosion calculation by the models. Based on RWEQ model, the average range of wind erosion in whole area was 15.7ton/ha/Y (class II-III). Assessments of different landscapes via IRIFR model showed that except saxual faces, lack of vegetation was the most effective reason on wind erosion of the landscapes. Also, the results showed that in case of shortage of data, especially for wind data in Iran, using of RWED model in order to assess the quantity of wind erosion and annual and monthly monitoring will be suitable.