مجله ترویج و توسعه آبخیزداری
پیاپی 16 (بهار 1396)

The increasing interest of world researchers and policy makers to sustainable development concept as well as excessive increaseing in population, degradation and overuse of natural resourcesconfirmed the necessity of the ecosystem health assessment. It is very important to help planners and managers country wide toward increasing the watershed sustainability and optimizing the use of available resources. Nowadays, ecosystem health has been concerned a lot and become an important index of regional sustainable development for managers and decision makers. Several approaches have been recommended for ecosystem health assessment. One of these approaches is indicator-based conceptual models. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to introduce vigor, organization and resilience (VOR) model for assessing ecosystem health through the simultaneous integration of qualitative and quantitative analyses. This model has been well considered by USA, China, India, Canada and Australia for watershed health assessment, but has not been yet considered in Iran. Due to the rapid growth of the industrial activities and the bad management of agricultural land in Iran, the ecosystem is gradually deteriorating, which makes it important to assess the ecosystem health and take measures to restore the damaged ecosystem towards adaptive management planning.

Harvesting and recognition of water quantity and quality is an essential step to optimization of consumption. Water quality is affected by environmental conditions and human activities.The main objective of this study is to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative changes in the Abu-Ghoveyr aquifer in Ilam Province in a 14- year period from 2001 to 2014. To this end, the statistics for 33 quantitative and 10 qualitative wells were used, after analyzing the data using ArcGIS software, iso_potential and iso-decline maps were developed. Moreover, the unit groundwater hydrograph was obtained for the region. In order to evaluate the quality of the groundwater, Electrical conductivity (EC) and chlorine (Cl) were Sampled and analyzed. The results obtained from iso-decline maps show that the different sections of the plains have had a decline between 1 to 10 meters during the selected period. During this period, the water level had an average decline of 2.65 meters (annually 20 cm). In order to determine the effects of rainFall on the levels of groundwater, the precipitation of this period was also considered. The results revealed that the highest level of water in the year 2004 was 77 m and the greatest amount of precipitation was 350 mm during that year.The results indicate the presence of a significant relationship between rainFall and the water levels. Investigating the parameters of EC and Cl level indicate the increase of these parameters in this period. Moreover, the central regions of the plains have a lower quality compared to other sections which is due to the concentration of wells and higher decline of water level in this area. Hence, it can be concluded that the most important factors in reducing the underground water levels and lowering the quality of Abu Ghoveyr Plain include drought, over exploitations, and the excessive number of wells.

Temperature is one of the most important meteorological parameters that can be used in many case studies. This parameter is of particular importance in the study of climate change and agriculture, So that climate change and rising temperatures is considered one of the most important environmental issues of human. Zoning of this parameter and study its changes can be effective in the correct management of soil and water resources and supply water requirement. This research studies the consequences of the climate change on the rainFall pattern in Ardebil province in the next three decades using the output data of the AOGCM model (hadcm3) under A1B scenario. Finally, the zoning of the temperature patterns changes were obtained in these periods. The results showed that there will be a significant upward trend in the temperature of the province. Moreover, in the third decade, Kosar station would be in the best condition with 0.35-3.13°C increase in temperature, and Sarein would be in the worst condition with 0.68-3.84°C increase in temperature.

Drought prediction has been playing important role in the planning management and using of water resources. In this research for drought predicting in 9 rain gauges station the Artificial Neural Network were used. The data used in this research is precipitation and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), selected stations from 1972 to 2010 sets. The results obtained showed that among the Artificial Neural Networks models, in the most stations the Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) has been able to predicting of SPI values with high correlation. Among the using stations, the Koohpayeh station showed the best action with correlation of r= 0.96 and RMSE= 0.04 and Ziyar station showed correlation of r= 0.86 and RMSE= 0.087, the lower performance than the other stations are shown.

Most of the precipitation in the mountainous basins is as snow which has an important role in generation of the runoff in the Fall and summer. So determining the temperature of snow and snowy coefficient is important to proper management of water resources. In this research, amounts of temperature, dew point depression, and saturated vapor pressure were extracted from 30 Synoptic stations in snow-rich provinces and the frequency, relative frequency and cumulative frequency of snowFall in different temperature ranges were determined for each station. To analyze the snowFall occurrence frequency, the appropriate distribution function was fitted on the temperature data and the possibility of snowFall in a giventemperature and less than it was calculated. Also, to predict the type of precipitation (rainFall or snowFall) the correlation between the dew point temperature and saturation deficit in the snowFall occurrence was determined and snow coefficient was calculated using the relationship Chandra coefficient. Our results indicated that the snowFall temperature mainly has the best fit with Gamble and Normal distributions. Also,the temperature of snow Fall in the snow-rich provinces of the country changes from 1.77 to -2.54°c . Results of occurrence frequency analysis with probability distribution functions revealed that the snowFall temperature decreased and snow coefficient increased with increasing the return period. The highest snowy coefficient with an amount of 72.96 in return period of 200 years is related to Maraghe.

Conservation and proper utilization of water and soil resources, particularly in arid and semi arid climates have high important in the management of natural environments. In this regard, the evaluation of various aspects of management practices is essential in identifying their strengths and weaknesses and also strategies for their improvement and optimization. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to evaluate the technical and social watershed management activities of Mahvid Catchment in Khorasan Razavi Province. In this catchment, biological activities such as transplant, seeding and enclosure and biomechanical activities such as terracing have been implemented which dates back 23 years. Technical evaluation results show that the effect of measures in addition to increasing the quality of vegetation, at least 20 percent canopy cover is obtained. Also, estimation of erosion according to improved vegetation, 20 percent reduction is show. Satisfaction Survey indicates the stakeholders with the implementation of biological and biomechanical activities in the research area are satisfied. Of course, to increase the satisfaction of these types of projects, providing alternative livelihoods especially at the time of the project implementation can increase the effectiveness and success.

Water resources are one of the most important resources in the continuity of life and socio – economic development. Without using of this valuable resource obtaining of growth and prosperity will be impossible to achieve. The study area (plain Saadat Abad) in Hormozgan province is located 140 km north of Bandar Abbas. In this area are 122 agricultural wells and two qanats. Due to high water withdrawals of water from wells and qanats aquifer levels rapidly decrease annually (approximately 0.6 M). So that water shortages are a serious problem felt. A number of active farmers have begun in collaboration and bank credit plan for the restoration and renovation of one of the canals. In this project as new initiative have been constructed a dam and transfer flood building for direction of 200 lit/s base flow to Parabedin qanat gallery. Then have been transferred water flood for irrigation of 800 hc follow area by dredging of qanat gallery. In order to economical evaluations of project have been compared water harvesting in this project with agricultural wells as usual method in the area. The results showed that with three levels (10%, 15% and 20% respectively) of the above price per cubic meter of water extraction by subterranean water wells less than the price farmers.Therefore, the implementation of development projects in addition to the economic justification would be to reduce flood damage, utilization of runoff, reclamation of arid lands to increase production and income of the agricultural sector to be effective.