میثم مجیدی

Groundwater monitoring networks provide important data which are necessary to understand the dynamics of hydrogeological systems. Since the cost of the installation and maintenance of groundwater monitoring networks is extremely high, optimal design and the assessment of the effectiveness of the monitoring networks is necessary. This paper presents the application of a newly developed geostatistical method based on the acceptance probability concept, to optimize the existing network of observation wells in the Shirvan alluvial aquifer, located in North Khorasan province. To this aim, by choosing a suitable semi-variogram and using ordinary kriging, the acceptance probability in the aquifer was calculated. Then, based on the spatial pattern of groundwater level, the acceptance probability was calculated for various parts of the aquifer and the acceptance accuracy values were analyzed at different levels of probability. The results showed that based on the existing observation wells network, 19.2% of the aquifer area has a very high acceptance accuracy. On the other hand, by modifying the network of existing observation wells and adding suggested points, 46.7% of the aquifer area will have a very high acceptance accuracy. Therefore, the installation of new observation wells in the proper locations will increase the accuracy acceptance and improve the efficiency of the observation well network.

Groundwater quality degradation due to geogenic and anthropogenic factors can endanger the human health. Therefore, designing a groundwater pollution monitoring network can provide the information needed for achieving water resources management goals and improving water and food security. The main objective of this study was to introduce an integrated approach for designing a groundwater pollution monitoring network based on index-based groundwater “protection-monitoring priority” maps created with GIS. The raster layer of “protection-priority index” was prepared by combining aquifer intrinsic vulnerability maps, produced based on the DRASTIC model, and estimated groundwater value based on the quantity and quality of groundwater. Moreover, by overlying pollution-sources risk maps and capture zone maps for wells, qanats and springs, the “monitoring-priority index” was obtained. By overlying the "protection-priority index" and "monitoring-priority index" layers as well as considering the direction of groundwater flow, sampling points were determined. By applying the proposed method, 15 wells were selected for groundwater sampling in Khash-Poshtkuh study area. Water samples collected from these wells revealed that, the concentration of toxic elements such as Arsenic is higher than the permissible limit for drinking in some wells in the southeast and north of Khash aquifer and the north of Poshtkuh aquifer which have geogenic origin.

In the arid regions of Iran, the construction of Bandsar has been one of the methods of runoff harvesting. However, despite the large extent of these structures in some mountainous catchments, so far, no study has been done in Iran on the effects of mountainous Bandsars on the river flow regime and other components of the water cycle in a catchment. In the present study, the effects of mountainous Bandsars on the Marandiz river, located in the southwest of Razavi Khorasan province, and its effects on downstream water resources have been investigated. Based on field studies and satellite images more than 150 Bandsars were identified in the study area. The area of agricultural lands behind the Bandsars was determined based on satellite images, which is equal to 4.8 km2 (2.2% of the total area of the river basin). In order to estimate the runoff from rainfall on a daily basis, the Curve Number Method (SCS) was used for the period 1998-2018. The average annual runoff volume in the Marandiz river basin was estimated about 2.6 MCM and the average annual runoff coefficient was estimated as 12.4%. The minimum and maximum storage capacity of the Bandsars (SCB)were estimated to be 0.95 to 1.43 MCM, respectively. If the daily runoff volume is more than SCB, the flood can reach the watershed-outflow point and enter the downstream plain. The results showed that a maximum and minimum numbers of floods reached the watershed-outflow point were 14 (5% of days with runoff) and five floods (2% of days with runoff) during the 15-year period. Therefore, the mountainous Bandsars in the Marandiz river basin have been reduced significantly the floods entering the downstream plain which has resulted in a decrease in the downstream alluvial aquifer recharge and increasing the groundwater salinity.

Deficit irrigation is a suitable method for obtaining the economic and acceptable yield with the minimum amount of water (Zegbe et al., 2004). Although the yield in unit area is decreased in this irrigation method, the amount of consumption water, water harvesting, delivery and distribution costs of water decreased, which results in more benefit (Yazar et al., 2009).Partial root drying (PRD) is the modified method of deficit irrigation which some part of plant roots is irrigated and another part of them are placed in dry soil. For the first time, the concept of PRD was applied by Grimes et al. (1968) in the United States. In this method, water uptaking from the wet zoning of plant roots holds the water status in plant in a favorable condition (Davies et al., 2002), and the other part of roots placed in dry soil results in increasing abscisic acid hormone production.The most important growth indices which are used frequently in plants include leaf area index (LAI), crop growth rate (CGR) and relative growth rate (RGR) so that plant production dry matter can be investigated using these indices (Modarresi et al., 2004). Investigation of variations of growth indices of five maize hybrids under two different irrigation regimes indicated that interrelationship between leaf area index and grain yield was significant (Nori Azhar and Ehsanzadeh, 2007).Water scarcity is one of the most important factors that decrease the maize yield and yield reduction depending on corn cultivars and growth stages that are affected by water stresses. With regard to desirable features of leafy and commercial hybrids of maize and also different effect of stresses in different stages of vegetative and reproductive growth, the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of water stress and new deficit irrigation strategies on growth indices of two corn cultivars in Kashmar climate.

Simulation of the rainfall-runoff process for planning and management of water resources and watersheds requires using a conceptual optimized hydrological model. Models of different types provide a means of quantitative extrapolation or prediction that will hopefully be helpful in decision-making. Recently, the application of models has become an essential tool for understanding the natural processes that have occurred in the watershed. KINEROS2 (Kinematic runoff and Erosion), or K2, originated at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the late 1960s as a model that routed runoff from hillslopes is represented by a cascade of overland-flow planes using the stream path analogy proposed by Onstad and Brakensiek (1968), laterally into channels. Manual calibration of hydrological models has been used since the early 1960s, but due to its complexity and being time-consuming, automatic calibration has been available since the end of the 1960s. Auto-calibration needs an appropriate objective function, search algorithm, and a criterion to complete the algorithm. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, due to its flexibility, easy implementation, and high performance, has been favored by many researchers in recent years. This method has a high rate of convergence and suitable computational cost.

In this study, the hydroPSO package was employed to optimize KINEROS2 (K2) parameters applied in the Bar watershed, Neyshabour, Iran. The hydroPSO package in R software environment was utilized to implement the PSO optimization algorithm. The possibility to develop R capabilities by adding the produced packages by the users is one of the most important specifications of this software. The statistical measures used in model validation analysis were model bias (MB), modified correlation coefficient (rmod), and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE). These metrics are the most common evaluation criteria in the literature. The capability of the model in water discharge estimation can be assessed by MB, while rmod signifies the differences both in hydrograph size and shape. In this work, 16 parameters have been introduced as the effective parameters on flood simulation by K2. These parameters were calibrated using the hydroPSO optimization package within R environment, which benefits from a parallel processing capability and a higher speed of computations, as compared with other software environments like MATLAB. The common parameters in the calibration process involved in the main code of K2 program include Ks, n, CV, G, and In. In this study, by changing some codes in K2 through the FORTRAN programming language, calibration parameters were increased by 16 parameters. Therefore, the response of a watershed to the variations of these parameters, separated for channel and plane, can be well evaluated. Due to semi-distributed simulation of K2, changing the amount of each parameter was done through “relative changes” in the initial value using a multiplier approach. Five storm events were utilized in hydrograph simulation, as well.

Results indicated the better efficiency of K2 based on the event 1992/03/31 with the coefficient of determination and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of 0.96 and 0.96, respectively. The events dated 1991/03/07, 1991/05/11,1992/03/16,1994/12/04, respectively, with the NSEs of 0.90, 0.90,0.89, and 0.43, showed the excellent, excellent, excellent, and good fitness of simulated flow compared to observed flow, respectively. Sensitivity analysis established that the parameters Ks_c, n_c, Rock, G_p, Ks_p, Por_p, and Sat were the most effective parameters in K2 calibration, respectively. The posterior distributions of some parameters such as n_c and Smax appeared to be more sharply peaked than other parameters which established less uncertainty in hydrological modeling. Visual inspection of boxplots showed that for 8 out of 16 parameters (Ks_p, n_c, G_p, In, Rock, Por_p, Por_c, and Sat), the optimum values found during the optimization coincided with the median of all the sampled values; confirming that most of the particles converged into a small region of the solution space. Dotty plots showed that the optimum values found for n_c define a narrow range of the parameter space with a high model performance. On the other hand, the model performance was more impacted by the interaction of Ks and n parameters. Correlation analysis revealed that the highest linear correlation between NSE and K2 parameters was obtained for the parameters Ks_p, Ks_c, n_p, CV_p, G_c, In, Por_p, Dist_p, Dist_c, Smax, and Sat.

In comparison with manual calibration, the HydroPSO R package could compensate for the shortage of K2 proficiency, due to the lack of enough observed rainfall records, in hydrologic modeling of semi-arid watersheds. Thus, it can be successfully integrated with the K2 model to harness the combined benefits of a distributed hydrological model and flexible computing capability of the open-source R software. However, the performance of HydroPSO in K2 calibration should be assessed for several semi-arid watersheds which have the similar conditions to Bar watershed.

As illustrated by World Economic Forum, the developed and developing countries are differentiated by the relevance of their economy to Innovation. Innovation is the engagement of many different individual and institutional actors and one of its key elements, is research. Global index confirmed that Iran is not high ranked with regards to innovation and the country showed its most success in presenting scientific papers. Although in the field of water there are some significant enhancements but the activities have not played an effective contribution in solving the existing challenges. This review note is reporting the importance of research and innovation in water management studies as well as the role of Iranian Innovation System in the same. The two main challenges which are addressed in this study are the weakness of institutional frameworks and the low efficiency of research actors/stakeholders. Results also showed that although there are many different high-level documents in this context in Iran, most of strategies and processes of research organizations or the influential stakeholders are not coinciding such documents and need revision. Furthermore, one of the key solutions for improving the research and innovation effectiveness is the relationship and engagement between the three elements of the national innovation system (i.e. universities, industries and government) such that the mobility of people among these elements would help to increase knowledge, skills, experiences and the “tacit knowledge” in form of a horizontal open engagement.

The Khash alluvial aquifer, in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, supplies the water needed for agriculture, drinking, and industry in the Khash area. In order to predict the future status of groundwater level and water quality, and to find aquifer management solutions, groundwater flow and solute transport models were developed using MODFLOW and MT3DMS. GMS 10.3 was used to develop the model. Calibration and validation of the model were performed using a seven-year period and a three-year period, respectively. The results showed that the flow model has a good performance in simulating groundwater levels when compared to observational data. The RMSE values ​​for calibration and validation periods were 0.67 m and 0.96 m, respectively. The solute transport model was established based on the groundwater flow model and was calibrated based on observational data of Cl- concentration in eight wells over a 10-year period from October 2007 to September 2016. The calibrated models were used to evaluate two scenarios in the forecast period (2016-2026). In the first prediction scenario, assuming the aquifer recharge and discharge rates are similar to the current condition, it was found that a significant drawdown in water levels will occur in most parts of the aquifer, especially south and southeast of the aquifer. As a result, the average water level will drop by more than 1.5 meters over 10 years, and consequently, Cl- concentration and groundwater salinity will increase. In the other scenario, which was defined to determine the safe yield of groundwater, it was found that to reach equilibrium and prevent increases in salinity, groundwater withdrawals from wells should be reduced by 50%.

Due to increasing imbalance between water supply and water demand, sustainability of water resources has become as a key issue in national and international water policy making. The development of water quantity assessment focusing on water balances have been identified as a main tool for guiding water policy and management at different decision-making scales, such as quantitative management and efficient allocation of water resources. In Iran, the WBA is being conducted every five years for about 609 watersheds. Although the water authorities are provided different guidelines and frameworks to improve the WBA, yet there are many obstacles which lead to high uncertainty in water balance assessment. On the other hands, there are some institutional issues which is associated to the process of conducting WBA and effect on proper policy making including problems related to data and measurements, time consuming process of studying WBA which itself takes another five years and some stakeholders do not accept the final results i.e. the renewable water or some water consumptions estimates. It is planned to identify the UPWB through online questionnaire forms and holding different expert meetings which will be finalized in a coming national symposium. It should be noted that the national symposium has two parts in which the second part is planned in a strategic way to address some practical resolutions. This investigation will provide the results of unsolved problems in WBA in Iran. This note explains the challenges of water balance assessment in Iran and the neccesity of a shared vision to understand the current situation.

In recent years, trust between managers and employees has been highly regarded for reasons that have affected the organization's impact and success. The purpose of this research, which is done, is to examine the effect of employees' trust on managers (vertical trust) on the success of the knowledge management system. This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the role of employees' trust in managers on the success of knowledge management in one of the ICT domains of Tehran in 2015. To elaborate a conceptual model, theories and models related to topics and research backgrounds have been extensively studied and a model that verifies the trust between managers and employees (vertical trust) and the success of the KM system, their interdependent design. Analysis has been analyzed. The statistical population of the present study consisted of 75 high and medium managers and experts and users of knowledge management system. Sampling method was used for data collection. The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between vertical trust and the success of management knowledge in the field of ICT. It was also concluded that trust, the factor affecting vertical trust has the lowest correlation and evaluation, the factor affecting vertical trust with the highest correlation with the success of knowledge management knowledge.

Complexity of evaporation process from a water body such as a lake or reservoir and lack of reliable and available data has led to limited developments in this field compared to research on other hydrological components especially where management of these water systems does not rely on more accurate spatial and temporal data. However the operation of reservoirs, development of a new storage, and water accounting strategies require more accurate evaporation estimates especially for drinking water supply in arid area. In this research a new method was developed for evaporation estimation presenting a different solution to the energy balance equation. The proposed approach, called reference and water surface energy balance (RWEB), carried out by defining the reference surface and simultaneously solution to the energy balance equation for both water and reference surfaces. The temperature and net radiation data were used in the proposed method. According to the input data, the RWEB method has the ability for remote sensing application and accordingly the remote sensing algorithm of RWEB was also developed. The method was applied to Doosti Dam Reservoir resulted in the distributed evaporation parameters and estimations

Water when harvested is commonly stored in dams, but approximately up to half of it may be lost due to evaporation leading to a huge waste of our resources. Estimating evaporation from lakes and reservoirs is not a simple task as there are a number of factors that can affect the evaporation rate, notably the climate and physiography of the water body and its surroundings. Several methods are currently used to predict evaporation from meteorological data in open water reservoirs. Based on the accuracy and simplicity of the application, each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages. Although evaporation pan method is well known to have significant uncertainties both in magnitude and timing, it is extensively used in Iran because of its simplicity. Evaporation pan provides a measurement of the combined effect of temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation on the evaporation. However, they may not be adequate for the reservoir operations/development and water accounting strategies for managing drinking water in arid and semi-arid conditions which require accurate evaporation estimates. However, there has not been a consensus on which methods were better to employ due to the lack of important long-term measured data such as temperature profile, radiation and heat fluxes in most lakes and reservoirs in Iran. Consequently, we initiated this research to find the best cost−effective evaporation method with possibly fewer data requirements in our study area, i.e. the Doosti dam reservoir which is located in a semi-arid region of Iran. Our study site was the Doosti dam reservoir located between Iran and Turkmenistan borders, which was constructed by the Ministry of Water and Land Reclamation of the Republic of Turkmenistan and the Khorasan Razavi Regional Water Board of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meteorological data including maximum and minimum air temperature and evaporation from class A pan were acquired from the Doosti Dam weather station. Relative humidity, wind speed, atmospheric pressure and precipitation were acquired from the Pol−Khatoon weather station. Dew point temperature and sunshine data were collected from the Sarakhs weather station. Lake area was estimated from hypsometric curve in relation to lake level data. Temperature measurements were often performed in 16−day periods or biweekly from September 2011 to September 2012. Temperature profile of the lake (required for lake evaporation estimation) was measured at different points of the reservoir using a portable multi−meter. The eighteen existing methods were compared and ranked based on Bowen ratio energy balance method (BREB). The estimated annual evaporation values by all of the applied methods in this study, ranged from 21 to 113mcm (million cubic meters). BREB annual evaporation obtained value was equal to 69.86mcm and evaporation rate averaged 5.47mm d-1 during the study period. According to the results, there is a relatively large difference between the obtained evaporation values from the adopted methods. The sensitivity analysis of evaporation methods for some input parameters indicated that the Hamon method (Eq. 16) was the most sensitive to the input parameters followed by the Brutsaert−Stricker and BREB, and radiation−temperature methods (Makkink, Jensen−Haise and Stephen−Stewart) had the least sensitivity to input data. Besides, the air temperature, solar radiation (sunshine data), water surface temperature and wind speed data had the most effect on lake evaporation estimations, respectively. Finally, all evaporation estimation methods in this study have been ranked based on RMSD values. On a daily basis, the Jensen−Haise and the Makkink (solar radiation, temperature group), Penman (Combination group) and Hamon (temperature, day length group) methods had a relatively reasonable performance. As the results on a monthly scale, the Jensen−Haise and Makkink produced the most accurate evaporation estimations even by the limited measurements of the input data. This study was carried out with the objective of estimating evaporation from the Doosti dam reservoir, and comparison and evaluation of conventional method to find the most accurate method(s) for limited data conditions. These examinations recognized the Jensen−Haise, Makkink, Hamon (Eq. 17), Penman and deBruin methods as the most consistent methods with the monthly rate of BREB evaporation estimates. The results showed that radiation−temperature methods (Jensen−Haise and Makkink) have appropriate accuracy especially on a monthly basis. Also deBruin, Penman (combination group), Hamon and Papadakis (temperature group) methods produced relatively accurate results. The results revealed that it is necessary to calibrate and adjust some evaporation estimation methods for the Doosti dam reservoir. According to the required input data, sensitivity and accuracy of these methods, it can be concluded that Jensen−Haise and Makkink were the most appropriate methods for estimating the lake evaporation in this region especially when measured data were not available.

The present study is conducted to measure longitudinal growth stress and strain in the trees observed in the west part of Mazandaran region and also to compare the current phenomena in two tree species of Acer spp and Quercus Castaneifolia. The selected species are generally grown in the forests located in the highest point of the west part of Chalous River, i.e. southwest corner of Chalous city. Employing the single-hole method proposed by CIRAD, a French research center, the growth stresses index was determined according to the longitudinal growth residual strain value along the stem. The findings suggest that the stress and strain levels in these species are highly influenced by various features such as the age and diameter of the tree, the wood type (the reaction wood), the surface slope, and the wind. Moreover, as Acer spp and Quercus Castaneifolia are both extremely sensitive to the environmental elements, their recorded stress and strain values are relatively high that is clearly evident in the corresponding longitudinal growth residual strain. The average measured longitudinal strain in Acer spp and Quercus Castaneifolia were equal to 76 micron and 82 micron, respectively.