Land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas, leads to desertification and land degradation is a concept that refers to any reduction of soil potentials. In Iran, that 85 percent of its area is classified in arid and semi-arid climates, and one percent per annum growth rate of desertification and its increasing trends, finding ways to evaluate this phenomenon and its causes in the form of models seems essential. In Iran, especially southern areas due to their arid climatic conditions, are considered to be areas prone to desertification. This study aims to evaluate and analyze the vulnerability of desertification in the Mond watershed located in the northern coast of the Persian Gulf.
In order to evaluate the potentials of desertification in the Mond watershed, geological, the erosion (water erosion potential), rainfall, slope, elevation levels and land use maps are used. To identify vegetation cover conditions Landsat ETM + sensor data and normalized vegetation index (NDVI) are used.
Where in reflected in the near-infrared band (Band 4, Landsat ETM+) and the reflection in the visible band (band 3 sensor ETM+) respectively. Overlaps and combines the above criteria is done using E-VIKOR (VIKOR developed) a method of multi-criteria decision-making models (MCDM). This method is based on a compromise plan proposed in the compromise solution is justified determines solutions that are as close to the ideal solution and has been created through special credit decision-makers. VIKOR use linear approach normal. The normal value in VIKOR is not related method unit of measure. Also standardization effective indicators of desertification has been done using a linear scale.
In this study, the ANP method (Analytical Network Process) was used for weighting criteria. Analysis method Network, is one of the popular methods of multi-criteria decision problems. This method complex relationship between and among the elements of the decision by replacing hierarchical network structure considers. Table 1 shows the weights of the effective criteria in desertification. In this study 7 criteria are used that results show criteria’s of climate and vegetation, have the most effective measures in the area of desertification and erosion (water and wind) have the least amount of importance in the region.
Table 1: weight criteria of effectivein desertification
criteria |
vegetation |
erosion |
Precipitation |
Landuse |
Geology |
Slope |
Elevation levels |
weight(W) |
0.21 |
0.18 |
0.15 |
0.14 |
0.13 |
0.11 |
0.08 |
After mapping the effective indicators in evaluating desertification separately, Standardization of maps, weighting the index, To obtain amount and , Finally, the amount of , was produced Zoning map of desertification that in it Mond watershed in the province Bushehr in terms of desertification is divided into five ratio and the area is provided in Table 2.
Table 1: Percentage and area zone of desertification
amount vulnerabilities |
Area (ha) |
Area (in percent) |
Very low |
516300 |
11 |
low |
598900 |
13 |
Average |
1438025 |
30 |
High |
2168675 |
46 |
Very High |
40825 |
1 |
Studies show that more than half of the Mond basin have on the surface with average risk of desertification and In the continuation of the current trend of soil degradation, desertification prone zones and will be reduced all lead to the deterioration of the natural ecosystems and human life quality.
Iran is among 10 top potential countries of occurrence of natural hazards in the world and from among 35 natural hazards, so far about 30 hazards have occurred in Iran(Negaresh and Latifi,2009). One of the different types of natural hazards which every year causes a lot of damage particularly in arid and arid regions of the world is the existence of sandy hills(Omidwar,2006); sandy hills are mostly created in coastal regions of most seas and oceans. These hills are the result of mutual effects of waves, marine currents, wind and sediments available in coastal regions. They are implemented with components of the coastal environment and construct the eco-systemic bases in which there are valuable collection flora and fauna(Kidd, 2001). The studied region is among the deserts near Gulf of Oman coasts. Sand on the coast are with marine origins and by getting far from the sea, sandy hills, in addition to having marine origins, have land origins. In some seasons of the year, particularly in summers and falls in which Monsoon winds start blowing up, the range of the movement of running sands is more towards rural regions in such a way that annually, a large part of sands covers residential areas, farmlands, road & building facilities, and infrastructural facilities in the rural areas of the west of Zarabad and left behind heavy damages and losses. The aim of this study is the detection of temporal-spatial changes in sand dunes in the Gulf of Oman coastal region. In addition, trend and severity of this hazard and the effects of climatic and environmental factors that intensified dimensions of risk were considered.
The present study, to achieve the mentioned objective is an applied study and in terms of research, a method is a descriptive-analytical one. To collected data, it uses library-documentary as well as survey studies in the rural areas of the west of Zarabad. After that, to investigate the changes of the degree of displacement in dunes of the studied region in the 23 year time period (1991-2014), GPS and the Enhance Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images of the Landsat Satellite 7 and 8 with the spatial resolution of 15 and 30 m were used. The satellite images were used in this study with time intervals of 10 and 13 years were related to years of 1991, 2001, and 2014 in August respectively and they were extracted from USGS.The ENVI software and Geographic Information System were used for images processing and interpretation. The geometric and radiometric corrections were applied on images according to standard procedures. Finally, classification and related calculation were performed.
The conducted studies in the region based on the interpretation of satellite images and survey studies indicated that changes in the available users in the region, the top increases for dunes occurred in 1991 as 561.25 km2, in 2001 as 568.10 km2, and in 2014 as 575.45 km2. In fact, it has experienced a growth as 17.198 km2. The vegetation whose area covers 32 km2 in 1991, in 2014 has reached an area with 45km2 and increased as 1.6% compared to the previous period. In 1990 to 2014, the area of the user which has been changed in favor of dunes, includes 0.108 km2 vegetation, 10.60 km2 stream sediment, and 264.35 km2 arid lands. Therefore, dunes move with high speed after each storm and during these displacements, a lot of damages are imposed on farmlands, facilities, and rural settlements. Investigating the degree of imposed damages indicates that annually, a large area of regions such as villages, roads, and facilities are influenced by running sands, which this trend can cover more regions in future years. The degree of displacement of dunes, according to the analyses conducted during the research period(1990-2014), has been so great that it has caused the burial of a large number of villages, infrastructure, farmland and roads and resulted in the unemployment of a large number of farmers in the region. Imposed damages to rural settlements have not been less than agricultural sectors and facilities. Therefore, due to the movement of running sands during recent years, 15 villages have been at the exposure of damages in such a way that compensation of these damages has imposed heavy costs, and consumed a lot of time on the shoulder of the society. As a result, the movement of dunes towards studied villages, i.e. Biahi, Mashkouhi, Abd, Rig Mostafa, Kalirak, Kerti, and Gati which are in the coastal regions, and Sohraki, Ganjak, Tanban, Zahrikar, and Kaidar which are located at far distances from the coast suffer from the highest amount of dunes and are considered as the most critical regions in terms of the movement of sand dunes. The results also showed that the important factors on severity and development of these critical regions are: a shortage of precipitation , loose and fine-grained sediments, low slope, no obstructions against the marine winds and high frequencies of winds and storms in this region.On the other hand, the lack of any varieties of vegetation on dunes, as well as the drought of recent years confirms spatial-temporal changes in the sand dunes towards the study area.
In this research, the hazards due to running sands in the West region of Zarabad (Baluchestan) were studied. The results from satellite image interpretation and field works were showed that the greatest change of land cover in recent years was related to sand hills. The total areas of sand dunes in 1990 are 561 km²,in 2001 these area increases to 568 km² and finally in 2014 reached to 578.5 km².The average growth rate is about 0.76 km² per year. The landcover change from river sediments and barren land to sand dunes, during this period are estimated 10 and 264 km².
The storm and marine winds moving sand dunes and running sands from coastal regions to rural settlements,farmland,Roads and other Infrastructures of the region. This hazard was just too much damage like buried villages, the destruction of roads and unemployment and migration of farmers. The number of evacuated villages are 15 cases that some of these villages is located in the coastal region(Biahi,Mashkohi,Abd,Kalirak……..) and others in inland(Soharaki,Ganjak,Tanbalan,…..).
This is the manifestation of crisis and instability in the rural communities that creating important obstacles to development and it is triggered vulnerable rural development was decreased.
Hazard is potential source of harm or a situation to create a damage. So identification of zones exposed to hazards is necessary for planning or land use planning. But this situation becomes more critical when they appear at the population centers. So applying the principle of passive defense based on environmental capabilities is unarmed action that caused the reduction of human resources vulnerability, buildings, equipment, documents and arteries of the country against the crisis by natural factors such as drought, flood, earthquake, etc. Considering the possible occurrence of such risks in population centers, ready to deal with what is known unpleasant and undesirable consequences is necessary. On this basis and given the importance of population centers in Helle and Mond basins, in this study, the authors tried to analyze the Rain hazards of drought and flood.
The study area,Helle and Mond basins, with about 21,274, 47653 km2 area, respectively are located in the south of Iran. The Helle basin approximately is between 28° 20'N and 30° 10'N latitudes and between 50° E and 52° 20'E longitudes and Mond basin is between 27° 20' and 29° 55' latitudes and between 51° 15' and 30° 27'E longitudes.These basins are located in sides of a massive sources of moisture, Persian Gulf.
In this study, data from 23meteorological and synoptic stationsstations, during aperiod of20 years (1992-2011)in northern region of the Persian Gulf (Mond and helle basins)were used to calculate Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The data were collected by the Iranian Meteorological data website (http://www.weather.ir). The SPI is primarily a tool for defining and monitoring drought events. This index may be computed with different time steps (e.g. 1 month, 3months, 24 months). The SPI is defined for each of the above time scales as the difference between monthly precipitation (xi) and the mean value ( ), divided by the standard deviation. To assess flood risk zones, the flood, annual evapotranspiration, cities and populations centers layers were collected in Helle and Mond basins position. The annual precipitations and the SPI maps were drawn by Geostatistics, Kriging. It also the flood and annual evapotranspiration layers were weighted by Euclidian distance method, separately. Finally, all layers are weighted by AHP and fuzzy-linear methods (descending and ascending linear function) into vulnerable layers. The final map of vulnerable areas with flood and drought high risk was drawn based on the algorithm of linear-Fuzzy in a raster format.
According to the results, eastern, north eastern and south eastern part of Mond basin had high annual precipitation. Based on this result, it said that these parts of study area were known the least dangerous areas of vulnerability. The results also showed that with passing of the western regions and going to the center of the study area the annual rainfall have been added over the years. Kazeron, Chenar Shahijan, Firouz Abad, Borm plains and some parts of Khane Zenyan and Dash Arzhan are cities located in this regions. Low latitude, Proximity to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, low annual precipitation and high temperature causing evaporation and inappropriate environmental conditions in Boushehr province and some coastal cities such as Genaveh, Deilam, Boushehr, Baghan, Lar and Khonj. Accordingly, west, north west, south and south west regions in Helle basin were located in extreme vulnerability zone with a loss of annual rainfall for drinking and agricultural production and poor nutrition underground aquifers.
This study was conducted to investigate the foehn mechanism in the Alborz Mountains.For this purpose, daily temperature, mean and maximum daily temperature, minimum, mean and maximum daily relative humidity, hourly wind direction and velocity data were collected and prepared at 8 selected stations over a 10-year statistical period (2006-2010). To derive the sum of frequency of occurrence of foehn, hot days are extracted using Baldy index and taking into account wind direction relative to station position and temperature rise compared to previous days were identified as days associated with foehn. Then, using NCEP / NCAR database data, different atmospheric alignment maps were obtained for the selected samples and plotted in Grads software environment. Then the position of high pressure cores and adjacent low pressures on the maps were determined. Results showed that Masouleh station with 41 days frequency and Astara and Bandar Anzali station with 18 days had the highest and lowest occurrence of foehn. Investigations on the synoptic maps of 35 foehn events showed that a total of three groups of Anti-cyclone or high-pressure centers were affected by the synoptic pattern of the region in the days involved. The first group is the Siberian High Pressure Tabs, whose cores are located in the confines of Lake Baikal, Balchash and northern Pakistan, depending on the season and synoptic conditions. The low pressure cores are located on the Caspian Sea and the pressure difference between the high pressure tab of the Alborz Outer Slopes and the Caspian Sea causes a compressive stress. In this model, Cyclone currents with increasing moisture of the Caspian Sea on the western slopes of Alborz Heights cause precipitation and warm flow due to warming under windward slopes. The second group is the anticyclone of Saudi Arabia, in which specimens with spin cores are deployed on southwestern Iran. As the north side of the Arabian High Pressure extends northwest of Iran and the presence of low polar pressure in the Caspian region with intensified compressive flow causes currents southwest along the perpendicular heights. Western anticyclone currents in the Arabian Sea circulate the moisture of the southern warm seas to northwestern Iran. The third group is a combination of African anticyclones, immigrants, Siberian highs and its tabs that create a thermal and compressive style over the study area and west of the Alborz Mountains. And provide the basis for the formation of the foehn phenomenon.
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