ECOPERSIA
Volume:8 Issue: 4, Autumn 2020

Awareness about the effects of banqueting and fire on the vegetation in rangeland ecosystems is necessary for appropriate management. Regarding the importance of sustainable rangelands management and the lack of studies about fire and banqueting, the aim of the current study is to investigate the effect of rangeland restoration practices (banqueting with seeding) and also fire on plant functional groups in semi-arid region of Atbatan Rangelands, Bostanabad.
Materials &

For this purpose, after choosing the treatments and control sites, via random-systematic method in each site, thirty 1-m2 plots were established along three 30-meter transects (there were 30 plots for each area and 240 plots in total). The canopy cover of plant species was recorded within the plots and categorized based on plant functional groups.

The results of statistical data analysis showed that the percentage of total cover in the north and south aspects of banqueting with 69.17% and 62.03% was significantly higher than the control sites with 52.53% and 48.03%, respectively. Fire in west aspect has reduced the percentage of vegetation (53.6%) compared to the control site (72.93%) whereas it did not have a significant effect in east aspect.

Generally, it can be stated that banqueting in the north aspect has more and increasing effect on plant functional groups but fire has a more complicated behavior in different topographic conditions (aspect) in relation to the banqueting and in west control site in term of the most studied parameters it has significantly more values than the other sites.

The main objective of the current study was to assess the efficiency of four-time series prediction methods to forecast the values of total dissolved solids (TDS) using a time series of over sixteen years.

The applied methods comprised of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) as the most traditional method, two neural network based techniques including multilayer perceptron (MLP) along with extreme learning machines (ELM) and a novel approach known as temporal hierarchies (TH) which was applied for the first time in water resources and water quality researches.

It was found that with respect to the forecasting accuracy, the MLP outperforms the ARIMA model for the training series where the MAPE (%) and MASE (mg/l) were reduced from 5.109 to 3.146 and 0.553 to 0.323, respectively. On the other hand, the forecasting accuracy of ELM was lower than that of MLP however the respective out-of-sample generalization ability of this model was higher with MAPE and MASE values of 6.526 and 0.683.

Meanwhile, it was concluded that temporal hierarchies gave the best results for the test part of time series. The main shortcoming of neural network based approaches was their reduced out-of-sample prediction due to overfitting. Based on the results, TH is a viable alternative for conventional time series forecasting techniques.

Producing a land use/land cover map is a fundamental step in different studies. This study aimed to assess the ability of hierarchical, pixel-based and object-oriented classification methods to produce land use/cover maps.

This study was conducted in the Harat-Marvast basin of Yazd Province, Iran using Landsat imagery of 2016 (paths 161 and 162, row 39). The hierarchical image classification method was tested for land use/cover mapping. A statistical comparison between three algorithms, namely pixel-based, object-oriented and hierarchical image classification was performed using the McNemar test. An intensive field survey was also accomplished to obtain training and test samples.

The kappa coefficients for pixel-based, hierarchical and object-oriented techniques were 0.76, 0.83 and 0.94, respectively. Results also showed that the performance of SVM and hierarchical algorithms are significantly different with aχ2f 112.3 which shows the superior performance of the hierarchical algorithm.

It was shown that the object-oriented approach performed significantly better than the two above-mentioned methods (χ2= 149.6). As the computational costs of object-oriented methods are relatively high, the hierarchical algorithm can be suggested when there are limitations in time or computational infrastructures. Therefore, the hierarchical algorithm can be used instead of simple pixel-based algorithms for land use/cover mapping.

The Zagros Mountains are a part of the 20th global hotspot, the Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot. In this study, we aim to develop a comprehensive checklist of endemic herpetofauna species in the Zagros Mountains as one of the biodiversity hotspot regions, to provide more information about this important area and the necessity of conservation programs to protect it.

The Zagros Mountains, with an area of about 533,543km2, ranges from Turkey and Iraq to western and southwestern Iran along the eastern edge of the Persian Gulf. A list of endemic species has been collected from the literature review.

This region contains 3 species and 7 subspecies of endemic amphibians belonging to three genera and two families, the Salamandridae (8) and the Bufonidae (2). Neurergus and Calliopersa are endemic to this hotspot. There are 40 species and 6 subspecies of endemic reptiles belonging to 24 genera and 10 families. The families with the greatest number of endemic species are the Gekkonidae, Phyllodactylidae, and Colubridae. Three genera, Asaccus, Mediodactylus, and Eirenis, dominate the region, with 32 endemic taxa. There are also two endemic genera, Parsigecko and Lakigecko.

Many amphibians in the Zagros Mountains, especially all the species of the genus Neurergus, are categorized in IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List and CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). The habitats of the Zagros Mountains herpetofauna, especially those of endangered and endemic species, should be protected and managed to maintain or restore populations of the declining species.

Aim of the present study is to describe the history and outcomes of the Iranian Conference on Watershed Management Sciences and Engineering (WMSE) from 1973 to 2019.

The archives of 14 WMSE conferences were first collected. Then, important information was derived and analyzed. 25 questionnaires were also analyzed.

The WMSE conference activities interrupted from late-1970s to early 1990s because of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian Cultural Revolution and closure of the universities. Then, after 18 years from the 3rd WMSE conference, the Watershed Management Society of Iran (WMSI) decided to continue holding the series of watershed management conferences. According to the analysis of the last 11 conferences, 2794 papers with 5029 authors have been presented. In total, 2635, 2177, and 47 students respectively with PhD, MSc, and BSc students were contributed. In addition, 862 and 238 contributions were respectively made from university and research institute parts. The temporal pattern of number of papers published in the WMSE conference showed a cyclic pattern during 11 conferences which increased one and a half times (i.e., 54%) in seven years from 2008 to 2014, followed by a sharp decline in 2016 (71%; Yasouj City) and 2017 (77%; Malayer City).

Despite a large number of papers presented in the WMSE conferences, knowledge about the watershed governance needs to be improved. It was proved that 48, 32, 16, and 4% of the WMSE contributors respectively anticipated the medium, good, bad, and very bad future for WM state in the country.

Recognizing the environmental factors affecting plants structural trials and biomass is important to conserve plants as well as their ecosystem function, and services. Onobrychis aurea is a valuable forage that is distributed in the marl lands and is considered as an endangered plant species in Iran. In the present study, the ecological characteristics (plant traits) of this species has been investigated in detail.

For this purpose, structural traits and biomass of O. aurea were investigated in 12 ecological units with different topographical and soil conditions. Three soil samples were taken to 15cm depth, (0-15cm) in each ecological unit. The relationship between structural traits and species biomass with environmental factors was tested by redundancy analysis (RDA) method in 2016.

The results indicated that the soil characteristics including clay, lime and silt content play a more important role in the structural and biomass traits of O. aurea evidence show. Spatial and topographical factors, especially elevation and geographical aspects, had a smaller contribution in structural traits and species biomass in comparison with soil factors. Higher structural values were recorded in heavy textured alkaline soils. The slope percentages also have no significant effect on plant characteristics.

The present study indicated that the soil and topographic factors are very important for management of O. aurea. In general, it should also be emphasized that having good knowledge related to plant ecology as well as environmental condition could help managers to conserve and rehabilitate endangered plants.

Dust phenomenon is one of the natural hazards affecting the arid and semi-arid regions of Iran. It carries large amounts of particulate matter, which have dangerous impacts on human health, environment and vegetation. Therefore, dust is considered as one of the most important environmental problems that have drastically increased in recent times. Recognizing the origin and size of these particles, their chemical and physical properties and their elements are important for controlling and evaluating their effects on human health and the environment.

The Kermanshah province is located in the west of Iran and is one of the provinces that receive the most exposure to dust storms. For this investigation, four cities that are exposed to dust were selected: Sar-Pul-e-Zahab (SZ), Gilan-e-Gharb (GG), Islamabad (IA) and Kermanshah (K). For the installation of marble sediment traps in the Kermanshah province, 36 areas were selected. After collecting dust samples, particle size distribution analyses were conducted by using laser size analysis techniques. Chemical compositions were measured with the help of different techniques such as x-ray fluorescence and x-ray diffraction.

The results showed that the sizes of dust particles varied from 0.0004 to 112 microns, putting them in the range of clay and silt. The particle size in Gilan-e-Gharb was 0.04 to 0.45, Sar-Pul-e-Zahab was 0.04 to 112, Kermanshah 0.04 to 90 and Islamabad 0.0004 to 10 microns. The mineralogical composition of the dust particles mainly constituted quartz, calcite, muscovite, plagioclase feldspar, dolomite and vermiculite. X-ray spectroscopy studies on the dust particles generally showed the presence of aluminum oxide (Al2O3), silicon oxide (SiO2), calcium oxide (CaO), iron oxide (Fe2O3), strontium oxide (SrO) and zinc oxide (ZnO).

In total, the results of this research work show that SrO, ZnO, silicon, aluminum, calcite, iron and their mineralogical compositions are the main oxides and elements in the dust of the Kermanshah province. Furthermore, the predominance of particle sizes in the range of clay and silt suggests that particles have been transmitted from medium to far distances alongside hinting at a similarity in their sources.