Land use changes can bring about changes in land surface temperature (LST) which is influenced by climatic conditions and physical characteristics of the land surface. In this study, spatiotemporal ...variations of land surface temperature have been investigated in the desert area of Dasht-e-Abbas, Ilam, based on a variety of land use changes. The investigated periods for the study include 1990, 2000 and 2010 using Landsat image data. First, in mapping land use we used the Fuzzy ARTMAP Neural Network Classification method followed by determination of the NDVI Index to estimate land surface temperature. The results show an increase in LST in areas where degradation, land use and land cover changes have occurred. In 1990, 2000 and 2010, the average land surface temperature of the Fair Rangelands was 26.72 °C, 30.06 °C and 30.95 °C, respectively. This rangeland has been reduced by about 5%. For poor rangelands, the average LSTs were 26.95, 32.83 and 34.49 Cº, respectively which had a 18% reduction. In 1990, 2000 and 2010, the average land surface temperatures of agricultural lands were 24.31 °C, 27.87 °C and 28.61 °C, respectively which has been an increasing trend. The reason can be attributed to changes in cropping patterns of the study area.
•Land use changes.•NDVI.•Southwest of Iran.•Fuzzy ARTMAP Neural Network.•LST.
Set during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the ensuing Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, the novel Martyrdom Street chronicles the lives of three Iranian women, Fatemeh, Nasrin, and Yasaman. These ...ordinary women tell their intimate stories of love, loss, betrayal, and hope in intertwining narratives that unfurl simultaneously in America and Iran. Kashani-Sabet’s characters endure both the familiar struggles of family relationships and searing political upheavals. A mother and daughter come to terms with the burdens of separation imposed by politics and exile. A young woman grapples with the haunting memories of an assassination. The poignant confessions of these skillfully wrought characters give voice to the travails of two generations of Iranians and Iranian Americans.
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•Stabilizing sand dunes with tar mulch can result in environmental pollution.•An alternative is to fingerprint key sources of aeolian sediment.•Geochemical data were combined with ...weathering indices to trace sand dune sources.•Alluvial fan material was the key source of the target sand dunes.•The weathering indices offer low-cost options for aeolian fingerprinting.
Confirmation of cost-effective and reliable tracers for aeolian sediment (sand dune) source fingerprinting warrants further research. Accordingly, the main objective of the work reported in this paper was to investigate the efficiency of weathering indices in aeolian sediment fingerprinting using a case study of a fragile arid region in Qom Province, Iran. Eight geochemical elements (Al, Ca, Fe, K, Na, Mg, Si, Ti) and 17 associated weathering indices were measured in 34 aeolian source samples and 10 sand dune target sediment samples in three absolute particulate size fractions. For each fraction, three final composite fingerprints (i.e., geochemical elements only, weathering indices only and a combination of the two) for discerning and ascribing the aeolian sediment sources were selected. The Modified MixSIR Bayesian un-mixing model was used to apportion aeolian source contributions using the final composite fingerprints. Regardless of the composite fingerprint used, all results across the different size fractions suggested that the south-eastern alluvial fan is the dominant (average contribution 50.6%, SD 19.0%) source of the sand dune samples, with the western alluvial fan being the second most important (average contribution 38.4%, SD 20.4%) source. Comparisons of the posterior distributions for the predicted source proportions generated using the nine composite fingerprints (three kinds of composite fingerprints*three particle size fractions) showed that the composite fingerprints combining the geochemical elements and weathering indices generated the most powerful source material discrimination. Our results demonstrate the use of weathering indices alongside more conventional elemental geochemistry tracers for investigations into sand dune sediment provenance.
Microbial and enzyme activities are increasingly being recognized as sensitive indicators of soil quality. This study aims to determine the impacts of different kinds of land use/cover, i.e. virgin ...natural forest (VNF), degraded natural forest (DNF), alder plantation (AP), sequoia plantation (SP), improved fallow (IF) and home garden (HG) areas on soil properties in northern Iran. Five composed samples per land use/cover were taken from the top 10cm of the soil.
Soil microbial respiration was found to be in the ranked order of AP>VNF>HG>DNF>IF≈SP areas, being more than one-and-a-half-fold under AP compared with SP. The values of microbial biomass carbon were almost two times higher under SP≈VNF than under IF≈HG areas. Microbial biomass nitrogen was found to be significantly higher under AP≈VNF than in the other kinds of land covers. AP≈VNF significantly increased the activities of urease and acid phosphatase, whereas greater activities of invertase occurred in AP≈VNF≈SP sites. Arylsulphatase activity was significantly higher to be significantly higher under AP in comparison with VNF>HG>DNF>SP>IF areas. As a conclusion, alder (Alnus subcordata C. A. Mey.) plantation improved the soil quality to levels similar to natural forest ecosystems. This research recommends the preservation of natural forests to increase soil quality and a plantation with suitable native broad-leaved species and forestation plan management to rehabilitate degraded natural forests.
•The type of land use/cover affects soil microbial and enzyme activities.•Alder plantation improved soil chemical, biological and biochemical properties.•Soil microbial biomass C increased under sequoia plantation and natural forest.•Biological properties were more affected by variations in soil C and N and available nutrients.
•The integrated soil quality index produced more plausible results than the Nemoro index.•Slope and elevation significantly influence soil quality.•Organic matter and grain size play a dominant role ...on the soil quality.•High erosion rates keep soil quality low to moderate in the Kan catchment.•Soil quality can be evaluated precisely enough by using the minimum dataset.
The objective of this study was to better understand the functional links between soil quality, erosion, geomorphology and land-use. This was done for the Kan catchment of the Tehran province, central Iran. Soil quality was assessed by using the integrated quality index (IQI) and the Nemoro quality index (NQI): this enabled the total and minimum datasets (TDS) to be obtained by using the principal component analysis. Soil erosion was calculated using the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) model using the InVEST software. The calculated erosion rates are very high (on average 7 t ha−1 yr−1) in the region due to the variety of topography, steep slopes and lack of suitable vegetation. The variety of topography and steep slopes are a caused by the high uplift rates. Consequently, the modelled actual erosion rates are in the same order of magnitude as measured, long-term denudation rates (10Be). The erosion rates in the rangeland were higher than in agriculture land and built-up areas and exhibit a positive correlation with elevation and slope angle. The integrated soil quality index produced more plausible results than the NQI. According to the IQI, the soils in the study area mostly have a moderate to low quality. The statistical analyses showed that organic matter and sand play a more important role on the soil quality than all the other soil characteristics. Slope and elevation seem to significantly influence the soil quality. We demonstrated that soil quality can be evaluated precisely enough by using the minimum dataset (which reduces costs and time) and that it is dependent only on a few soil parameters. Soil quality and erosion rates vary strongly in areas having a rough and steep topography and the effect of land-use is partially overshadowed.
•Confined compression curve was related to hydraulic conductivity curve, closely.•Using confined compression curve parameters improved the precision of PTFs.•Using σmc and σi as inputs improved the ...estimation of hydraulic conductivity.•Gompertz model of compression curve can be related to the hydraulic conductivity.
This study was conducted to estimate the soil unsaturated hydraulic conductivity through the van Genuchten model using easy to measure soil properties by regression and artificial neural networks methods. In this study, 148 soil samples were taken from five provinces of Iran. Basic soil properties (clay, silt/sand and bulk density) and other soil properties were measured. Soil water retention curve was measured to obtain the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curve using the van Genuchten–Mualem model. Confined compression curve was measured and the modified model of van Genuchten was fitted on its data. Two-thirds and one-third of the data were used for the training and testing steps, respectively. Confined compression curve parameters and other soil properties were used as predictors to estimate unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curve. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) were developed in two separate parts: in 5 and 6 PTFs basic soil properties were or were not used as predictors, respectively. The artificial neural networks (ANNs) performed better than the regression methods. Among the ANN-developed PTFs which have not used basic soil properties as predictors, PTFa3, with the inputs of the parameters of confined compression curve (n∗, α∗ and e0), performed better than the others. Also, among the ANN-developed PTFs that used basic soil properties as predictors along with the other input variables, PTFb5 that used the σmc (stress at the maximum curvature) and σi (stress at the inflection point) as inputs along with basic soil properties, performed better than the other PTFs. The results showed a successful prediction of the hydraulic conductivity curve using confined compression curve.
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•Expected value function is proposed to integrate different geochemical signatures.•Expected value function is much better than fuzzy operators.•The function generates enhanced ...geochemical evidence layer.•The enhanced evidence layer is used for delimiting exploration targets.
Delimiting exploration targets using geochemical exploration data can be a challenging issue when different geochemical signatures represent the same deposit-type sought. In this regard, fuzzy operators have been used to integrate different geochemical evidence layers into a single model for generating target areas. In this paper, a GIS-based expected value function was adapted to integrate different geochemical evidence layers into a stronger geochemical signature for delimiting exploration targets. Then, the expected value function and fuzzy operators were compared. The comparison demonstrated that the former is more efficient than the later for generating a stronger geochemical evidence layer. The higher efficiency of the expected value function is because it simultaneously uses the value of all input variables and their relative importance in the process of integration. The proposed approach was evaluated by using a lithogeochemical data set for prospecting porphyry-Cu deposits in Jiroft area, Kerman province, southeast of Iran, as a case study.
•The trend in the concentration excreted in drainage water was: Si > Mg > Ca > K > Fe > Mn.•The trend in the total excreted amount in drainage water was: K≫Mg ∼ Ca ∼ Si > Fe > Mn.•Mg and Fe were ...fully subject to redox conditions due to intensive irrigation.•Si had the highest excretion rate (22 meqL−1) among of the all elements studied.•More than 85% of Fe and Mn were removed from the soil during irrigation period.
The present study was conducted to determine the concentration and total amount of some compounds excreted in the drainage water of two different records of soils cultivated with sugarcane and to compare the mineral evolution of these soils with that of uncultivated soils. Cultivation changed the soil class Typic Aquisalids in uncultivated soils to Fluventic Haplustepts in cultivated soils. Unlike other elements, Ca and Mg showed a storage trend in some months. Mn and Fe depletion was largely a function of reduction conditions due to intensive irrigation, leading to high depletion in the irrigation period (80–85% of the total amount discharged). Although Si removal was a function of the irrigation period, its amount was much higher than that of Fe and Mn. However, as the irrigation record increased, more Si was removed during the irrigation period. Except for Mg, Si, Fe, and K, removal through drainage water did not depend on the length of the cultivation period. It was argued that these compounds were released due to the evolution or dissolution of clay minerals. During the irrigation period, K was removed much more than all other elements because of wetting, drying, and increasing NH4 by applying fertilizers. Si > Mg > Ca > K > Fe > Mn and K≫Si ∼ Ca ∼ Mg > Fe > Mn were the trends observed in concentration and total excreted amount in drainage water, respectively. Furthermore, minerals such as palygorskite, illite, and chlorite were abundant in uncultivated lands, but decreased or almost disappeared in cultivated lands, leading to the formation of expandable minerals such as smectite and vermiculite.
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