نشریه محیط زیست و توسعه
پیاپی 22 (پاییز و زمستان 1399)

Lack of proper management of construction wastes can have devastating environmental, economic and social effects, so it is important to examine the quantity, quality and economic justification of waste processing. In order to quantitatively estimate the construction wastes of Gorgan, a city in north east Iran in the year 1394, two parameters including “number of unloads” and “car load" were used. Financial feasibility was also assessed using Net Present Value and Break-Even Point method. The results of quantitative analysis showed that an average of 264 tons per day summing up to a yearly 96861 tons of construction waste are dumped in landfills. Soil with 33.5% comprised the highest percentage of construction wastes and the lowest was wood with 1%. The financial feasibility analysis of establishing a center for construction wastes processing in Gorgan did not justify it economically. However, if in addition to Gorgan, the construction wastes of four neighboring cities are also processed, then the plan becomes economically acceptable. In this case, the net present value reaches Break-Even Point after nine years and eleven months, after which it becomes profitable. Therefore, accumulation of construction wastes of the four neighboring cities justifies the recycling plan. In addition, this practice will lead to financial profitability, reduce environmental pollution and the pressure of public opinion and ultimately will help moving towards the sustainable development of the region.

In this paper biocultural diversity, its assessment and conservation has been investigated by reviewing different articles. The most striking characteristic of life on earth is its enormous diversity which is formed not only by the variety of plant and animal species and ecosystems, but also by the variety of cultures and languages in human societies. However, currently both biological and cultural diversity are showing an unprecedented rate of decline in human history. Studies in late 20th century have demonstrated that there is a direct link between distribution, threats and loss of these diversities on both regional and global levels. Increasing awareness of commonalities and linkages among biological, cultural and linguistic diversity and realizing the fact that breaking down of these linkages underlies many of the environmental and social problems humanity faces today; have led to the development of a new field named "biocultural diversity".  In this regard, many researches have been completed in different countries as well as in the world, the main lines of which can be grouped as: global and regional analyses of the correlations between linguistic and biological diversity; tools for measuring and assessing the state of biocultural diversity; and studies about the persistence and loss of biocultural diversity. It seems therefore that carrying out such studies in Iran considering its biological and cultural diversity, could be of higher importance.

One of the most important issues of the twenty-first century is environmental problems caused by human activity, especially industrial sector. One of the main causes of these problems in the industrial sector is waste resulting from production operations and the studied refinery is no exception. The aim of this study was to identify, classify and determine the amount of produced waste. This study was implemented as a field study in Shiraz Refinery. Type and tonnage of the wastes were identified and measured after reviewing of production processes and sources of waste generation. Then classification of wastes was carried out according to the Basel Convention and special codes were assigned to each of the wastes. The results showed the highest amount of waste produced are petroleum liquid and metal sheets in Shiraz Refinery. Also 77% of total waste productions are process wastes. Based on the Basel Convention, 66% of wastes produced in the refinery are considered as hazardous. Finally, referring to the defects observed in the refinery waste management, we offered solutions to reduce waste production and described staff training programs.

Technological developments have given rise to many problems for humans necessitating the need to offer ways to reconcile humans with nature and to preserve it. Physical problems such as increased airborne diseases, water and soil pollution and ailments such as depression and fatigue have been caused or exacerbated by machine life. These have pressured people and scientists towards adopting a more harmonic way of life in nature and also encouraged policy makers to develop laws for better nature conservation, among which conservation and restoration of wetlands has received high attention. However, these laws have shortcomings in need of further refinements. We suggest that any such review consider the role of institutes and private sector investment for job creation and sound natural resource utilization. Also, there is a need for comprehensive studies on restoration of the threatened wetlands to prevent waste of money in useless projects. Conservation of wetlands which are among the place of interest for large number of tourists, generates high revenue in the tourism industry. The occurrence of recent floods and the associated destruction of infrastructure have shown our incomplete understanding of the country's aquatic environments. In order to prevent these damages from happening in the future, a fundamental review of the plans and programs related to the environment should be made. It is suggested that this review be carried out both in the field of government policy and in executive aspects of the law.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the position of environmental components in the tenth grade textbooks in Iran. The research method was descriptive using content analysis. The statistical population included the books of the tenth Grade Schools, investigated totally without any sampling. A researcher-made content analysis inventory which was compiled by expert judgments and examined by descriptive indices using analytical process of Shannon Entropy, was employed to gather data. The result showed that:1. The frequency of environmental components in the tenth grade textbooks of humanities was 410, in natural sciences was 679 and in mathematics - physics was 535. 2- In the tenth grade textbooks of the humanities, component " Sanitation and Health" with importance coefficient of 0.181 was the most important dimension and component " population" with importance coefficient of 0.067 was the least important dimension. 3. In the tenth grade textbooks of the natural science, component " wildlife " with importance coefficient of 0.125 was the most important dimension and component "population" with importance coefficient of 0.008 was the least important dimension. 3. In the tenth grade textbooks of the mathematics, component "sustainable consumption" with importance coefficient of 0.141 was the most important dimension and components “problems of and threats to the environment”, and "population" with importance coefficient of 0.03 and 0.01, respectively were the least important dimensions.

From the beginning of the third millennium AD, the countries on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf has begun to build artificial islands. In this study, the role and responsibility of Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) towards the environment and sustainable development of the Persian Gulf has been investigated. The countries along the Persian Guld and Sea of Oman coasts are destroying the marine environment by building artificial islands. Knowing that construction of artificial islands endangers the marine environment of the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman, the role of the ROMPE in countering the construction of artificial islands are explained in this paper. For this we resort to the role and responsibility of the regional environmental organizations; their structure, the objectives of the ROPME Convention, its duties, its five protocols, the existing legal provisions and their implementation. Based on the objectives of the Convention, the protocols and some of the materials related to the roles of this organization we reviewed and summarised issues in the form of foresight analysis recommendations. For this, we applied a descriptive-analytical research using library resources, Internet and the use of GIS and Snagit software. The process of invloved talks on important cases with ROPME members or referring to the ROPME Judicial Commission. If these cases are not followed up in a short period of time, the marine environment of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will be endangered.

Flood as a disaster in the Madarsoo Watershed of Golestan Province has caused many socio-economic and environmental consequences in the last decades. In this study, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and sensitivity analysis were used to assess the effects of road infrastructures on flooding of Madarsoo Watershed, Golestan Province. First, the effective thematic layers on the flood occurrence including slope, rainfall, distance from bridges, drainage density, and altitude were prepared in ArcGIS10.2. The final weights of factors were determined in Expert Choice software using pairwise comparison and questionnaires filled by experts. Furthermore, a flood susceptibility map was created based on these weighted-layers, and then validation was carried out by ROC curve method in SPSS 21 software. Results indicated that the distance from bridges and altitude have received the highest and lowest weights, respectively. Validation of results showed that our analysis performed fairly good in flood predication with an accuracy of 88%. Moreover, results of sensitivity analysis demonstrated that distance from bridge has a great effect on the flood susceptibility of study area. Therefore, non-standard bridges, road infrastructures on river and flow discharge regime are considered as the most important factors in flood occurrences in Madarsoo Watershed of the Golestan Province.

Lead is one of the most toxic heavy metals and is highly cosnumed in industry with highly negative effects on living organisms even in very small amounts. Air pollution with lead causes a diversity of diseases in humans and organisms. In aquatic environments lead pollution damages the functioning of phytoplanktons as one of the important sources of oxygen production and caused imbalance in the global aquatic organisms. Among absorbents, algae are of special importance, as lead gets accumulated in algae easily leading to the high absorption coefficient of these absorbents. In this study, lead absoption by algae was investigated. The research variables included absorbent dose, pH, temperature, optimum absorption time, and maximum absorption. Classical adsorption isotherm models, including Langmuir and Freundlich and two adsorption kinetics of pseudo-first-order model (Lagrgn) and pseudo-second-order model (Ho) were also examined. The results showed that the high adsorption rate of lead was due to algae, especially brown algae. However, the isotherm and kinetic variables and models of lead absorption in algae did not follow a distinguishable order. It must be noted that for the operation of the heavy metal adsorption of lead in real environments using algae, the special conditions of the place, time, temperature, and concentration of metal should be considered.

Ecological network analysis (ENA) is a new systematic approach that studies the structure and dynamics of ecological systems such as food networks. It is also able to evaluate ecosystem function and make it possible to compare ecological systems. The application domain of this approach has been wide and nowadays expanded to ecological risk assessment. There are many ecological models and the method of network analysis has been significantly improvedin recent years. Among these models, Ecopath and Inverse modeling are great for investigation of relationships in food webs. Some of the challenges users face when applying these models include the need to characterizing an entire ecosystem flows, data on the amount of each component and data accuracy. Determining the allowable exploitation amounts of natural resources and prediction of human effects on natural systems are some of the important applications of ENA. This approach has long been considered in environmental studies to solve various environmental problems, however, studies of this kind in Iran are few. Therefore, this study was performed to introduce ENA and especially food models and its applications on harvesting systems, which warrants more attention of researchers and managers in the field of environmental sciences.

The present study is an analytical documentary that seeks to answer the question "What is the impact of the zoo on the ecological identity of citizens?". In this regard, after providing a clear explanation of the basic theoretical foundations of research, it was tried to explain the impact of environmental education on the ecological identity of citizens, by clearifing the functions of zoos; as a piece of nature cake; in urban spaces. The purpose of this paper was to make a discourse on the functions of zoos, especially in offering environmental education, with an emphasis on the protection of biodiversity as a prerequisite for the development of citizens' ecological identity and motivate citizens to participate in environmental management and planning processes in cities. The results of the present study suggest that environmental education based on lived-experiences in the zoos can play a constructive role in the development of citizens' ecological identity by combining direct and indirect experience methods. In this regard, audience recognition is very important. Therefore, during the research, the audience was divided into four categories: "Children", "Youth", "Adults" and "Elderly, Disabled and Sick" and the requirements of each were discussed in detail. At the end, suggestions were made.

initial step to adaptation. The present study, therefore, aims to identify the regional effects of climate change using qualitative paradigm and grounded theory in Guilan Province. Focus groups and in-depth interviews techniques were used to gather data. Statistical population of the research contained specialists and experts of the relevant fields selected using snowball sampling. Through interviewing 12 experts across Guilan Province, theoretical saturation was achieved. The results show that the regional impacts of climate change in Guilan Province can be classified into seven categories including: Climate variables, climate hazards, agriculture, groundwater and surface water, diseases, environmental and socio-economic impacts.