Journal of Spatial Analysis

  Iran is a wide and great land that is located on Alps earthquake belt of Himalaya. Great part of the urban and village residency of the country have been exposed to the intensive earthquake and destructive. Sarab city with several other cities, including Tehran, Karaj, Abyek, Qazvin, Roudbar, Khalkhal ,Tabriz, Marand and khoy are located on Earthquake belt that Earthquake risk is too high.   In Eastern-Azerbaijan and Sarab, potential earthquake risk is very high, since there are a lot of active faults and historical evidences show the horrific and destructive earthquakes.   Sarab city located in the Sarab plain which have abundant faults in various directions. Earthquake as a natural phenomenon doesn’t have good results but what can make it a catastrophe, is the lack of prevention from its effects and no preparation for coping with its aftermaths.   The unsuitable establishment of structural elements and urban land-uses and atypical web of urban open spaces, the old ages of and low quality of the structures in the decayed area of the factors like this have main role in the increasing the amount of damage entered to the cities against to the earthquake.   It is necessary to reduce the vulnerability of the cities against the earthquake and to consider it as one of the main goals of the urban planning.   Main objective of this paper is planning for reduction of damages arising out of earthquake in Sarab city. The study area is the Sarab city with four urban regions and 15 districts. The present research is an applied study.   For this purpose, considering the goal of the study, nine factors including the type of structural materials, the quality of the buildings, the number of the floors, the population density, pedestrian width , the availability of open space and distance from river were identified and evaluated, so that for each of the indicators or factors, one layer of map with shp format was produced and then in an analytical hierarchy process and weighting to the variables, layers overlaying operation using available analytical functions was implemented in Arc Gis software. Finally the vulnerability map of the Sarab city was prepared. According to the results of AHP model, it is concluded that Sarab in terms of vulnerability has no appropriate status against earthquake risk so that the whole Sarab city is vulnerable to earthquake, but some of its neighborhoods due to low quality of buildings and vulnerability of streets network and inaccessibility to open areas and excessive compression are more vulnerable. Deteriorated urban area is one of the most vulnerable parts of the Sarab city during the occurrence of the earthquake. Therefore, to reduce the health and wealth damages which can cause by the earthquake in the city.  

In issues related to air pollution, the thickness of the boundary layer is known as the depth of the mixed layer because the pollution on the ground surface is mixed in this entire layer through turbulence processes. In most cases, the boundary of the area is clearly visible on big industrial cities. The depth of the mixed layer has an important effect in the concentration of air pollution which is dependent on the intensity and duration of solar radiation and wind speed. Usually after 2 to 3 hours from the time of maximum solar radiation, air temperature near the earth's surface reaches its maximum value. At this time convection of heat is formed in the air near the earth surface and transfers the heat from the surface to higher altitudes. These vertical movements will cause atmospheric turbulence and increase in instability. This is when the growth of the mixed layer reaches to its highest level. After sunset, night temperature inversion occurs near the surface. This temperature inversion is due to the rapid cooling of the Earth's surface. In such condition, the cold air layer is near the earth's surface and the warm air layer sits on top of it and air is in a stable condition.  As a result, the accumulation of contamination, if there are sources of pollutants, will increase in the earth's near-surface layer. If the conditions remain steady during the day, the mixed layer will not have much growth and as a result, contamination in the shallow layer near the surface of the Earth reduces solar radiation.

Each year, thousands of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter are emitted in the metropolitan area of Tehran and due to the geographical and climatic conditions of Tehran, temperature inversion phenomenon is not something unexpected. By formation of the inversion layer, these pollutants will remain near the earth's surface for a long time which in turn will be the cause of a lot of heart and respiratory problems. Therefore, identifying the characteristics of this layer on polluted days is of particular importance to the health of the residents of this city.

In this research, the study area is Tehran which is in the foothills of the southern Alborz and between longitudes 51 ° 2 'to 51 degrees 36' east and latitude 35 degrees 34 minutes and 35 degrees 50 minutes northern. The height of the northernmost point of this city is 1800 and up to 1200 meters in the center and 1050 meters in the south.

To conduct this research, inversion data including temperature, wind, atmospheric pressure and humidity and vertical navigation radiosonde data at the Mehrabad weather station from January to 29 December 2013, were taken from the Meteorological Organization of country. Then the statistics of daily vertical scroll of atmosphere above the Mehrabad synoptic station was received from the University of Wyoming. Also, the hourly data of air pollutants including gaseous pollutants CO, N2O, O3, SO2 and particulate matter (PM10) were prepared from the air quality control center (AQCC) for the stations Aghdasiyeh, Geophysics, Poonak, Rey and District 11.

After receiving information about the vertical scroll of the atmosphere in Mehrabad station, in order to have a closer examination of the vertical profiles of potential temperature changes in the lower atmosphere, using daily data from the radiosonde to obtain potential temperature changes in height were measured. Then, in order to identify the days with high pollution levels (the unhealthy condition for sensitive groups) and days with good conditions, so that all stations under study were the same, based on a standard index of air pollution Table 1 was developed. In the end, 4 days with critical inversion of potential temperature, including two polluted days (February 6th and August 16th) and two clean days (9 February and 5 June) were detected. Then according to the proposed method of Hefter, the approximate height of the boundary layer was calculated for these 4 days.

In this study, it was observed that the boundary layer height in contaminated cold season of the year reached 1,200 meters in the morning hours while in the afternoon in the cold samples, it grew to 1900 meters. In the warmer months based on the height of critical inversion layer in the selected days it reached more than 6,000 meters. In pure samples of warm and cold seasons, the boundary layer height had significant growth to the extent that in the cold sample of the year it reached to 2,100 meters in the morning and 2,600 meters in the afternoon. On June 5, which is intended to represent the clean and pure heating season, boundary layer height was of 5300 meters in the morning hours which shows a 4,000-meters increase in comparison to its polluted counterpart. The point to be noted is that since the active track of potential temperature can be considered as a measure of air stability, in the critical inversion, for the case of polluted samples of morning hours that were irradiated with inversion, active track of the potential temperature was very high in them. Thus on days with radiated inversion (polluted days) we can say that border of boundary layer was based on the inverted layer. Also the methods used in these types of inversions are more efficient for the determining height of the boundary layer.

One of the most important components of the extent of pollutants mixing and air quality at near the Earth's surface is the height of boundary layer. Many variables involved in determining the height of the boundary layer of atmosphere. Although all of the troposphere (the lower ~10km of the atmosphere) is affected by surface conditions, most of it has a relatively slow response time. The lower part of the troposphere that is affected on a shorter time scale is commonly defined as the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). The depth of the mixed layer has a significant effect on the concentration of air pollution, which itself is dependent on the intensity and duration of solar radiation and wind speed. According to Stull, one can describe the planetary boundary layer as “that part of the troposphere that is directly influenced by the presence of the earth’s surface, and responds to surface forcing with a timescale of about an hour or less.”  Surface temperature has a strong relationship with height of the PBL. As the surface cycles between daytime radiation and nighttime cooling the amount of convection taking place changes. When the temperature gradient is steep, more convection takes place to dissipate thermal energy in the most efficient manner. In other words, the greater the temperature difference between the surface and the lower troposphere, the higher convective eddies must reach to alleviate the gradient. Relating this to Stull’s definition of turbulence, it can be concluded that the height of the PBL varies with surface temperature. In fact, the spatial range of the PBL can vary from less than one hundred meters to several kilometers. The strong relationship between convective turbulence and height of the PBL is sometimes used to define the boundary layer and call it the Convective Boundary Layer (CBL). Analogous to the Stull’s definition but focusing on turbulence, Lloyd et all describe CBL as “a layer of air typically of order 1km in depth, well mixed by turbulence maintained by buoyancy due to heating at the ground. It is bounded above by stably stratified, no turbulent air and grows through the day.  In this study we aimed to analysis the status of ABL in 3 dust period days in Khuzestan province of Iran.

The Data were used in this study includes: The Daily data of dust concentration during 27Jan to 1 Feb 2015, the daily height of ABL also were used. The daily data of ABL were given from ECMWF with 1/8 degree spatial resolution. We used the Pearson correlation and synoptic analysis to assessment the condition of boundary layer at the mentioned days. For analysis the characteristic of ABL the climatic data of Wyoming University were used to assessment the thermodynamics of atmosphere. The spatial distribution of ABL height at the dusty day also were used for 12 UTC.

The results indicated there is the direct relationship between the ABL height and the concentration of dust in the mentioned days. So that in the days that the concentration of dust reaches maximum we fund that the height of ABL reaches maximum simultaneously and vis versa. The spatial distribution of ABL height shown that the height of ABL in the 29Jan reaches maximum that the maximum concentration of dust related to this day. And also the minimum concentration of dust observed in 27Jan and 1Feb that the in this day the height of ABL was minimum. The synoptic analysis also reveals that locating the low pressure system at the 500hp level that the Khuzestan province has been locating at the front of this system lead to transport the dust to study area.

In this study we reveal that the height of ABL in the dust days of Khuzestan has a totally revers behavior in compare to the air pollution days in Tehran. In the pollution days in Tehran the lowing of ABL height and inversion lead to intensify the concentration of pollution while in the dust days of Khuzestan the height of ABL were increased in compared with non-dusty days.

Drought is one of the most important hazards that occur in all the earth especially in arid and semi-arid climates. Every year, about half of the earth’s surface experienced droughts and while drought is not a constant feature of any climate but occur more frequently in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Although the occurrence of droughts cannot be prevented but by studying the nature and characteristics of droughts and also identify factors that affecting their occurrence useful information can be gained about drought and their destructive effects. The researches in recent years designed and proposed a lot of indices to study and analyze the droughts and today various characteristics such as intensity, duration, area and so on with these indices are studied. Many indices used by researches to analysis and identify properties of climatic droughts and dry periods. In these indices often the variables of precipitations, combination of precipitations and temperature, humidity or evaporation, crops yields and teleconnection climatic indices are used.

In this study using the CPEI index and 30 years (1980-2009) daily rainfall data in 40 synoptic stations overall Iran, to analysis and assess of Iran droughts suitable variables detected. Four seasons and annual period is considered in this study. To determine the appropriate variables in the design of suitable models and modeling of drought to assess and predict droughts Otun in 2005 proposed CPEI index as Conjunctive Precipitation Effectiveness Index. He selected 10 conjunctive precipitation variables as ORS(Onset of Rainy Season), CRS(Cessation of Rainy Season), LRS(Length of Rainy Season), TWD(The Total no of Wet Days), TDS(Total no of Dry Spell), TDW(Total no of Dry Days within a Wet Season), TDY(Total no of Dry Days within a Year), LDS(Length of the Dry Season), MDL(Maximum Dry Spell Length within a Wet Season), MAR(Mean Annual / Seasonal Rainfall Depth) and determined the relationships between variables in each synoptic stations and climatic regions. Since the units of measurement the rainfall variables are diverse, it is essential that the units be converted to a standard unit, in other words variables be standardized. The relationship between variables was determined by Pearson correlation coefficient. Finally, the right combination of precipitation variables for each station through the proposed formula Otun(2005) were determined. In the end, for each of the seasons and the annually period regionalization maps were prepared.

 All 40 synoptic stations were evaluated by Otun’s method (Aton, 2005). The results showed that 95 percent of stations in spring, 75 percent in fall, 57 percent in winter and 75 percent in annual period are compatible with used method. Thus, spring, fall and winter seasons and also annual period are compatible with above mentioned index. Among the used variables MAR, MDL, TDY and TDS which with respectively are as follows: total amount of precipitation in any period, the maximum duration of dry periods in a wet period, the total number of dry days in a wet period and the total number of dry period during wet period among the stations are more abundant. In annually period, in addition to the above mentioned variables, precipitation variable of LPS (length of dry period) also seen among some stations. Also, results showed that CPEI index can be used on most stations and climatic regions of Iran. It was also found that the spring compared the other seasons and annual period is more comparable on the base of CPEI index.   

  Otun in 2010 used the CPEI index in semi-arid region of Nigeria and has achieved good results. The results of our study show good agreement with Otun’s work. The use of this index in the study of meteorology, climatology, agriculture and many environmental projects can be beneficial because in many of these fields of study, precipitation and its characteristics have an important role. In general we can say that in regions where CPEI index does not show a high proportion or set of variables are not enough it is better to use other indices such as SPI and RAI. The results obtained in similar climate zones such as Nigeria has shown that CPEI index has very good ability to identify and explain the precipitation effectiveness variables which can be used in modeling of droughts and dry periods. There are many similarities between combination of precipitation variables that identified by CPEI index for Iran and other regions of the world. Similarities, especially with respect to MAR, MDL, TDY and TDS are abundant.

Abstract

Climate change in one area has severe impacts on water resources and, consequently, agriculture in that area. Therefore, studying the extent of the vulnerability of regions to adopting policies to reduce or adapt to new conditions is of particular importance. One of the methods for assessing the extent of damage to agricultural activities is the calculation of the vulnerability index. In this study, with the aim of assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change, The CVI index was calculated for 16 cities in Guilan province.

The results showed that the cities of Rasht (61.58) and Talesh (55.21) had the highest vulnerability and, accordingly, had the least adaptive power to climate change compared to other cities. And Langrood County (29.51) has the lowest number of vulnerabilities. The average value of the calculated index is 40.42 in Guilan province. In component R, the most vulnerable were Talesh (99.66) and lowest for Lahijan (2.27), In component M, the highest vulnerability was for Rudbar (97.21) and the lowest for Talesh (24.30), In component A, the most vulnerable were Rasht (89.99) and the lowest for Anzali (2.21), In component C, the most vulnerable were Shaft (66.66) and lowest for Anzali (1.89), In component U, the most vulnerable were Rasht (67.55) and the lowest for Astara (28.92), In component E, the highest vulnerability was for Talesh (76.49) and lowest for Lahijan (22.69), In component G, the most vulnerable was reported to Rasht (53.05) and the lowest vulnerability was reported for Sunnelk (23.24).

Abstract

Urban heat island (UHI) is one of the environmental phenomenon which has made difficult environmental conditions for citizen. This study aims to evaluate the spatial and locational variability of Esfahan urban heat island according to the role of land use. Thus an area about 190.2 square kilometers (km2) in Esfahan, as the microclimate, was studied. In order to analyze the relationship between land use and land cover changes on Esfahan urban heat island, the images of Landsat 7 (TM and ETM +) and Landsat 8 (OLI / TIRS) on 20 July 1989, 17 August 2005, 18 August 2014 have been used. The results show that the urban areas has experienced 31% changes in positive direction; while the agricultural sector and green space havehad a reduction of 25% in their area. The analysis of the intensity of heat island show that heated cores are related topoor and barren lands with about 37/33 and 36/5. Although the most area of thermal classwere related to warm thermal class in 1989 and 2005, the average thermal classes were about 63/8%in 2014. Moreover, the locational variation distribution of Esfahan heat island shows that the locationof the heat island has gradually changed. For example in 2014 it included small parts in the south of the city, military zones and barren lands in the south, some parts in the north west and north east areas and small areas in the east of Esfahan. This means that urban development isn’t the main factor of the surface temperature increase and urban heat development, but rather the type of land use has influenced the decreasing or increasing of air temperature.

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Comparative analysis of snowfall events in Iran with emphasis on the location of the polar plateau and remote connection patterns

Abstract
Extream snowfall event that may occur at any time during the cold season, has significant social and economic implications. Therefore, the economic and social consequences of these events reveal the importance of identifying the synoptical mechanisms associated with the extream snowfall events. In order to achieve this goal, using daily precipitation and temperature data during the statistical period of 1951-1 2016 and based on multiple criteria, the two three-days extream snowfall events were identified during February 7-9, 1972 and February 2-4, 1988. After selecting samples, a statistical analysis of the teleconnection indices was done and then, using the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data, the combined patterns of surface and lower, middle and lower troposphere were plotted in the form of three-days mean. Results obtained from analysis of teleconnection indices and their correspondence to the synoptic patterns indicate the weakening of the tropospheric polar vortex and its division into multi-centers in the periods of extream snowfall events. In the event of February 7-9, 1972, though the centers were moved to mid-latitudes, but they are not completely out of the Arctic and to some extent maintain their position in this area. In February 2-4, 1988, the vortex centers have shown a more equatorwards displacement towards the mid-latitudes that the emergence of negative phases of the NAM and AO represent such a situation. However, in both events, the strong and main center of the polar vortex is located in the eastern hemisphere and therefore in a state close to Iran. The weakening of the sub-tropical jetstream in the eastern hemisphere, especially in the Mediterranean, has resulted in the transmission of potential vorticity tabs to mid-latitudes. The equatorwards progress of these tabs has led to the formation of the trough in the western and eastern Mediterranean regions that accompany with a ridge between them, led to the formation of omega bundle patterns and split flow, respectively, in the events of February 1972 and 1988 in this geographical area. The southern boundary of the progress of the troughs has specified by index contour of the edge of the vortex by 552 gpdam, that extends to the southern part of Iran and in the February 1972, event compared with the pattern of the February 1988, had the more-equatorwards progress toward the middle latitudes, and as a result, over Iran.
Keywords: extream snowfall event, teleconnection, polar vortex, the edge of the vortex, blocking patterns.