Caspian Journal of Environmental Sciences
Volume:19 Issue: 1, Winter 2021

This study aimed to investigate the effects of different climatic conditions (arid vs. semi-arid) on patterns of species richness and plant diversity as well as plant composition in two over-grazed regions. The regions were located in the west of Iran, closed to each other and different in climatic conditions. Based on the aridity index of De Martonne climate classification, Rika (I = 9.94) and Dalab (I = 18.54) were categorized as arid and semi-arid regions, respectively. In each region, we collected plant vegetation data from a nested sampling design consisted of local (80 plots) and regional (8 sites) scales. Patterns of plant diversity and species richness in each region, and similarity of plant composition between the two regions were analyzed using multiplicative partitioning methods, species richness estimator and cluster analysis, respectively. The results showed that diversity components in all scales had significant difference with their expected values (P</em><0.000) resulted in non-random distribution of plant species among and within scales. In addition, the results showed that species richness in Rika region (arid, 89 species) was greater than Dalab region (semi-arid, 76 species). The results of cluster analysis suggested that Rika and Dalab regions had different plant species compositions. Based on our results, the role of seed dispersal might be more prominent in smaller scales (plot and sites) compared to region scale, since the highest possible amount of β-diversity was occurred between regions. Our results suggested that plant diversity in the largest scale (region) had the highest amount of diversity components where the rangeland manager should attend on this scale for conservation of plant diversity.

Abattoir wastewater is a major source of pollution burden and life-treating human pathogenic bacteria. The aim of this study was to determine the extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing (ESBL) producing E. coli</em> isolates and their antibiotic resistances in wastewater samples. In this experimental study, abattoir wastewater samples were collected and identified from 32 different regions in Mazandaran Province, North Iran. Disk agar diffusion test was applied for testing antibiotic resistance. Phenotypic detection of ESBL-producing isolates was performed using combined disk method. The presence of blaSHV</sub> </em>gene was investigated using PCR method. The prevalence of E. coli</em> in wastewater samples was 10%. The ESBL test analysis was positive for 14 (93.33%) isolates. The prevalence of bl</em>aSHV</sub></em> gene in ESBL-producing E. coli </em>isolates was 93.34%. The highest antibiotic resistances in ESBL-producing E. coli</em> were found concerning to ceftizoxime and gentamicin (100%), nalidixic acid, ceftazidime and ciprofloxacin (93.34%). Nitrofurantoin was the most effective antibiotic against E. coli</em> isolate exhibiting the highest sensitivity (73.34%). In conclusion, the prevalence of ESBL-producing E. coli</em> is high and being increased. The high prevalence of blaSHV</sub></em> gene in these isolates may be a reason for their pathogenesis and ability in transferring the resistance genes to multiple antibiotics. Therefore, there is a need to develop appropriate treatment and safer disposing abattoir wastes in this province.
 

The Caspian Sea as the largest land-locked water body is very sensitive to the environmental changes. The rise and fall of the Caspian Sea level has significant impact on the environment and coastal communities. Using extensive deep water measurements in the south Caspian Sea, we have examined the role of sea level changes on the vertical water exchange.  While the deep water ventilation happened during sea level fall (70s of 20 century), coastal lagoon expansion and marine stagnant circulation state were the major impacts during rapid sea level rise (1980-1995). The marine environment however benefits the rapid sea level fall.  During sea level fall, vertical circulation penetrates deeper and faster which distributes oxygen and nutrient more effectively in the water column. It provides the condition for enhanced bio-productivity. However, the current global warming could prevent the impact of lowstand to faster circulation. The present rapid sea level fall displays new impacts on the marine environment, reflecting as hypoxia.

The perimeter of Tadla, a strategic irrigated agricultural area in Morocco, but its rainwater resources are becoming scarcer. In fact, this work aims to study by relevant methods of rainfall variability in this perimeter, with a semi-arid climate, using 60 years (1958-2018) of data from the local network of 27 weather stations.  Drought threshold is determined at 243 mm/year and the rainfall deviation index reaches -11%. Reduced centred indices provide information on equity in surplus, normal and deficit years of rainfall and that three successive periods corresponding in rainfall dominance to number: 13, 8 and 39 years; that Hanning's second order low-pass filter weighting maintains proportionalities but advances them by ten years. Mann-Kendall test also approves rainfall decrease; Sen's test gives a negative average trend slope. In addition, statistical tests for the detection of chronological rupture (Pettitt test, Lee and Heghinian bayesian method, Buishand U statistic, Hubert segmentation) detect the break in 1978 and lead to observations after rupture in reduction of 36 % in rainfall, increase in the frequency of deficit years at the expense of surplus years and mapping on a spatio-temporal distribution of precipitation of three homogeneous areas, including isohyets more displaced according to drying from west to east. Our results characterizing deep regional climate changes as rainfall are useful in programming resilience or adaptation to rainwater scarcity in such vulnerable agricultural biotopes.

The face of the earth is always changing due to human activities and natural phenomena. Therefore, to optimize the management of the natural areas, knowledge of the trend, extent and estimation of land cover / use changes is considered necessary. Reviewing these changes through satellite images and evaluating their potential through modeling can help environmental planners and natural resource managers to make more informed decisions. In the present study, quantitative detection and evaluation of changes in vegetation were performed in the areas with combat desertification projects, Shahdad, Bam and Garmsar in Iran, during a 30-year period within 1987, 2002 and 2017. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and land use maps were produced using the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) satellite images in the three corresponding periods for the vegetation/non-vegetation, and agricultural lands. The Kappa coefficient of 0.83 to 0.86, 0.91 to 0.92, and 0.94 to 0.95 was calculated for 1987, 2002, and 2017 respectively, and the total accuracy was between 88 and 97. After providing the land use maps in different years, the monitoring of land use changes was investigated using the Change Detection method. According to the trend of changes during the periods, the results exhibited that the vegetated lands in these three areas had an increasing trend in average 31.33%, and the non-vegetated lands were turned to vegetated lands over time. In other words, they have declined by an average of 35%. Moreover, an increasing trend was found for the agricultural lands during the periods in average 4%. Eventually, the cost-effectiveness of projects implemented in the studied areas was calculated.

The Kouh-payeh with an area of 3000 km2 </sup>is located at 70 km east of Isfahan on the edge of central Kavir at longitude 52° 26ʹE and latitude 32° 43ʹN. In this study, the floristic richness, life form, geographical distribution and conservation status were assessed. All plant species were collected from Kouh-payeh area during 2014-2016. The collected species were identified, then life forms and chorology of each species were estimated. By examining a total of 200 collected plant species, 38 families and 137 genera were found. The dominant life forms were mainly identified as therophytes (45%) and hemicryptophytes (34%). Based on chorotype information, an Irano-Touranian distribution (60%) was generally observed in this area. Other chorotypes such as Irano-Touranian/Saharo-Sindian (6%) and Irano-Touranian/ Euro-Siberian (6%) were present in lower quantities. Among the identified species, 43 endemic species were also recognized. In terms of conservation status, there were Low Risk (77%), Vulnerable (15%) and Data Deficient (8%) needed some conservation policies. This study was performed for the first time in this area.

360 pieces of Persian sturgeon fingerlings (1.94 ± 0.75 g) were exposed to various sublethal doses of disinfecting chemicals commonly used in aquaculture such as sodium chloride and methylthioninium chloride in order to investigate their impacts on bacterial loads of skin, gill and surrounding water and to define the histopathological status of gill and liver tissues. The sublethal concentrations were determined after a pre-test, then the experiment was performed  in four treatments with three replicates inside the glass aquariums with stocking density of 10 fish (1-3 g) per aquarium. The treatments included 5, 6.3, 8.06 and 10.23 mg L-1 </sup>sodium chloride and  also 1, 1.56, 2.45 and 3.83 mg L-1</sup> methylthioninium chloride. A control group (with no chemical added) was set up for each experiment. After exposure to treatments during 96 h, the microbial and histopathological examinations were carried out. Hemorrhage, elongation of secondary lamellae, adhesion of secondary lamellae, hypertrophy of supporter cartilage, mucus coagulation and secretion, hyperplasia, lamellar necrosis and clubbing of gill lamellae were observed on the fish gills. Biliary depression, hemorrhage, cell necrosis and degeneration of lipid were also found in liver. The severity of these effects was  dose-dependent. Only the sublethal concentration of methylthioninium chloride significantly influenced bacterial load (CFU g-1</sup>) on skin, while other treatments of sodium chloride and methylthioninium chloride did not exhibit any significant effects. In conclusion, the sublethal doses of methylthioninium chloride and sodium chloride showed no obvious disinfecting effect on gill, skin and surrounding water of Persian sturgeon fingerling. Nevertheless, histopathological alterations were observed on fish gill, skin and also  liver of all treatments.

The aim of this study was to assess the abilities of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to adjudicate upon cases concerning violations to environment upraised from nuclear accidents. This was non-causal research, based on qualitative methods. With respect to information gathering, the document and library research process were employed, then qualitative method was applied to analyse the information, by which international rules governing the issue and related case law of ECtHR was studied, assessed and analysed. Findings indicated that ECtHR has accepted the environment rights by broad interpretation of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, in the Court’s precedent, applications with no actual victim were not considered as violation in the convention. The latest approach taken by ECtHR, taking prevention principle into account, could improve its abilities to protect potential victims of violations caused by nuclear accidents due to environmental rights. In conclusion, despite some barriers against the complaint processes in the Court, new approach was recognised as a more protective one.

Urgent is growing to have reliable information from the country's water resources. In recent years, data mining models such as artificial neural network (ANN), gene expression programming, Bayesian network, machine algorithms, such as a support vector machine (SVM), and Random Forest have found widespread use in the field of simulation and prediction of components in aquatic ecosystems. Variables vary greatly on water quality parameters (due to nonlinear and complex relationships). Therefore, conventional methods are not eligible to solve water resource quality management problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of simulating the spatial and temporal alterations in water quality parameters during the period 1985-2014 in Anzali Wetland using a SVM model. Based on principal components analysis (PCA), the parameters EC, TDS, pH and BOD5 were selected for analysis in this study. Spearman correlation was calculated to determine the inputs of the model and the correlation coefficient(CC) between the water quality parameters. According to the results of the correlation table analysis, 8 types of structures including different inputs were used to predict the parameters with machine vector. In the next stage, 70% of the data were used to train, while the rest were used for analyzing the models. Criteria for determination coefficient (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) were used for evaluation and model performance. The results revealed that in verification stage among different used models, the pH had the highest accuracy (0.95), while the lowest RMSE (0.20). Trend of alterations for optimal model of each parameter on a time scale, indicated an adequate estimation at most points. In general, the results exhibited the appropriate accuracy and acceptable performance of the SVM model in simulating water parameters.

The main objectives of the present study were to determine the species composition of Caspian shad, genus Alosa and to estimate the LWR, CF, and Kn of A. braschnikowi and A. caspia during different months in the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea. Two fishing methods, small mesh size beach seine and gillnet were used from December 2013 through July 2014. A. braschnikowi and A. caspia, were distinguished in the southeastern part of the Caspian Sea (Goharbaran), consisting of 57.1% and 42.9% of the Alosa catch, respectively. The slopes (b values) of the length-weight regression were 3.241 and 2.844 which were significantly different from 3 (P<0.05), indicating positive and negative allometric growth, respectively. The average CF of A. braschnikowi and A. caspia were calculated as 0.72 ± 0.12 and 0.83 ± 0.13, respectively. The average CF for both species were significantly different among months (P<0.001). There was a significantly negative correlation between size classes and CF of A. caspia. The Kn was greater than 1 for A. braschnikowi and lower than 1 for A. caspia indicating good well-being of A. braschnikowi as opposed to A. caspia in the southeastern Caspian Sea.

Landfills represent possible sources of diverse contaminants that can cause human health and ecological problems. The purpose of this study is to assess the pollution caused by a leachate from Ziama Mensouriah municipal landfill (north-eastern Algeria) affecting sediments and surface water. The water quality has been evaluated using River Pollution Index (RPI). Sediment contamination assessment was carried out using the pollution indicators including: contamination factor (CF), pollution load index (PLI) and geo-accumulation index (Igeo). According to the results, the RPI of Amsal River indicates an unpolluted water at site 1 (S1) (RPI = 2.5), severely polluted water at landfill effluent discharge (S2) (RPI = 8.25) and moderately polluted once at site (S3) (RPI = 5.5). In sediments, the order of mean concentration (µg g-1) of metals was Pb (156.2) > Cd (1.76). Furthermore, spatial distribution of both metals in sediments showed a significantly higher concentration at S2 indicating that metal pollution is caused by leachate from the studied municipal landfill. The Igeo values reveal that Pb was significantly accumulated compared to Cd. The highest CF values (>6) of Pb and Cd determined at S2 promote a high Pb and Cd contamination in that specific station. The PLI results showed that all sites, except for S1, were moderately to extremely heavy contaminated.

Nowadays, climate change and sea level rise are serious threats to the social, economical and environmental vulnerability of the ocean coasts all around the world, and the Caspian Sea rapid fluctuations during the third millennium have set different conditions on the environmental structure of coastal areas. The main target of this study is to evaluate the coastline morphology behavior and the deformation of habitats and ecological condition of Boujagh National Park (BNP) due to Caspian Sea level changing during the progression and regression phases between 1978-2019. Initially, based on the available scientific documents, familiarity with the study area was carried out and the axes of measurements were defined. In field operations, sedimentation and erosion units of coastal zones and also different habitats were identified and geographically determined. In the next step, the rate of deformation of coastal habitats was calculated and classified using satellite images and GIS, and ultimately, validity of the results was verified with field evidence. The comparison of regression amount in BNP indicated that maximum negative shoreline displacement (892 m) has occurred in the east part of Sefid-rud River mouth during 1978-1995. So that, the shoreline negative changing has reached to 850 m in the north- western of central part of study area, while 738 m in north- eastern of central part in the period of 1995- 2019. The inundation zone extent has declined 104 ha between 1995 and 2019. Also the sea regression amount of area was 111 ha in the period of 1978- 1995, while changed to 380 ha during 1995-2019. During the last 24 years, there have been widespread environmental alterations in the studied area and a large part of the coastal wetlands has been dried up. The most important habitats affected by the Caspian Sea fluctuations include coastal lagoons, dry and wet sandy beach, fluvial meadow and river estuary.

The main objective of this work is to study the psychological impact (stress and depression) of the mandatory quarantine applied on the Moroccan population in order to limit the spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19), then the study of the psychometric properties of the Arab BDI-II in the general Moroccan population. 263 respondents were asked to respond to a BDI-II and PSS-10 socio-demographic questionnaire conducted during the first month of quarantine. 55.9% of the respondents were in a normal state of stress and 36.1% in a moderate state. However, 38.4% and 27.8% exhibited minimal and severe depression respectively. The results of factor analysis with the varimax rotation method revealed three factors predicting 55.56% of the total variance of BDI-II, while two factors predicting 60.97% of the total variance of PSS-10. Cronbach's alpha values for BDI and PSS-10 were α = 0.93 and α = 0.58 respectively. In conclusion, the BDI-II is a reliable and valid assessment for measuring symptoms of depression in the general Moroccan population and also very important to pay more attention to the side effects of mandatory quarantine.

The purpose of this study is to determine the factors affecting the adoption of new technologies by poplar growers in Sowmeh Sara City, Guilan Province, north of Iran. The statistical population of the study includes poplar growers in the city. A total of 200 individuals were examined based on Cochran's formula and cluster sampling method at 2018. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the impact of attitudes toward technology, understanding the use of technology, technological features, and social participation on the adoption of new technologies. Understanding the use of technology and social participation, and their constituent items, have had the greatest impact on the adoption of new technologies by poplar growers in Sowmeh Sara City. Accurate and transparent information about the features of new technologies and their differences with traditional methods is the key strategy in introducing these technologies and it will lead to adoption by poplar growers.

This paper presents an overview of the current municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Rasht City, Guilan Province, Iran, followed by evaluating the potential for waste-to-energy. The data of different MSW functional elements were collected from previous works, available reports, interviews and meetings with specialists in the field. About 800 tons MSWs are generated in Rasht per day, of those, over 75% are organic wastes followed by paper and cardboard comprising 5.9%. The daily theoretical energy contained in the city MSWs was estimated to be over 591.62 megawatt hour (MWh, over 215942.54 MWh per year). Almost 500 tons of daily MSWs are directly transferred to Saravan as the biggest landfill in north of Iran with an area of about 30 ha, while the remaining portion is treated in the Guilan composting plant. Landfill mining calculations showed that we could recycle about 3008947, 36793, 61443 and 18366  tons of plastics, textile, wood and  rubbers collected from Saravan landfill respectively. A simple assessment of waste-to-energy potentials from organic wastes using operational conversion coefficients revealed that by employing the combination of waste-to-energy and gas turbine technology, an estimated energy of 227.668 MWh can be produced from the Rasht daily food wastes. Although MSW management in Rasht  has been improved over the last decade owing to the establishment of waste recycling and composting organization, however it is still far from the standard situation due to lack of comprehensive waste management planning, financial resources and infrastructures

The main objective of this study is to investigate the production of carbon dioxide and its effective factors on CO2 emission in Iran and other parts of the world. The results show that by increasing the population and to meet their needs, it is necessary to increase the production of fossil fuels, in the less-developed or developing countries. Also in developing countries by increase in the gross domestic product (GDP), expenditure in these countries arises. Since there is no suitable infrastructure for optimal use of resources properly. In Iran, the rate of CO2 emission arises by increased population and GDP. However, in developed countries, due to the high technology available to the society and government, the amount of CO2 emission is decreasing or under the control. In order to create suitable infrastructure for proper management of resources and expenditure, as well as to reduce CO2 emission, long-term planning is suggested to be drawn. Hence, transferring the technology to the country and domesticating it, will help in this trend. Furthermore, cooperation with successful countries in the field of reduction and control of CO2 emission and using experiences of successful countries facilitated this trend.