Journal of Spatial Analysis

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Today, urban and regional issues related to sustainable development is a key challenge for policy-makers, planners and specialists in various disciplines. Geomorphologic studies can be useful and effective in analyzing and deriving acceptable means to assess the growth and development of the city, and to set criteria to determine the directions of urban development.    Landslides range of motions not only affect the human structures such as roads, rail lines and residential areas, but also lead to casualties. Tehran metropolis mountainous basins, including Kan, Vesk, Farahzad, Darake, Velenjak, Darband, Golabdare, Darabad, Sorkheh-Hesar, and Sohanak due to the lithology, geologic structure, weathered sediments, steep slope, rainfall and poor urban development are considered as one of the places where landslides are a range of geomorphologic processes can be studied.    At this research, using Fuzzy and AHP methods and by the use 8 factor variables such as lithology, elevation, slope, aspect, annual rainfall, maximum daily rainfall, distance from fault and drainage system. the map of landslide zonation hazard in mountainous areas of the city is prepared to determine risky strips. After the standardization of the criteria for the occurrence of landslides and using frequency ratio method and fuzzy model and functions, Landslide hazard zonation maps was prepared for evaluating from the fuzzy sum, fuzzy product and fuzzy gamma operator 0.8 and 0.9. Then the final map of landslide zonation, obtained from the above-mentioned method matched with the map of urban regions in mountainous areas. In this way the constructed region have been distinguished from very high and very low hazard zonation.    Lithological studies showed that most of the basin areas covered by Karaj Formation. About 45/7 percent of units with sliding movement in areas with "rock crystal tuff and tuff lytic green, with the layers of limestone" (unit Et2) of the intermediate tuff formation occurred. Cross of faults distance map with landslide density map showed that about 33/1 percent of landslides occurred within 200 m of the fault lines and 78/4 percent of landslides occurred within 500 m of drainage network. Most sliding movements (60/2 percent) in the range of 1900 to 2500 meters altitude and about 35/3 percent of this type of range of motion in height of 1500 to 1900 meters occurred. This area is about 81/6 percent of sliding movements in slopes between 15 and 40 degrees (26/8 to 83/9 percent) and about 17/6 percent on slopes less than 15 degrees (26.8 percent) occurred. In the aspect, sliding movements of the basin, mainly in the south-western slopes (about 23/2 percent), the South (about 17/5 percent), West (about 16/6 percent) and Southeast (about 77/1 percent), northwest (about 33/1 percent) occurred. About 88/9 percent of sliding movements in areas with average annual rainfall of 244 to 280 mm occurred. According to the zoning map, 12 percent of mountainous basins area (approximately 10,057 acres) is in the zone of very high risk, 33 percent (approximately 27,723 acres) is in high risk areas, 20.5 percent (approximately 17,143 acres) in the moderate risk zone, 30/ 7 percent (approximately 25,672 acres) in area and 3.8 percent of the total area of the basin, low risk (approximately 3172 acres) located in low risk areas. The results showed that approximately 5.2 hectares (about 0/05 percent) of the urban in zones with a huge landslide, about 51/5 acre (approximately 1 percent) in zones with high landslide risk and about 821 acres (equivalent to 25/16 percent) in the medium risk landslide zones are located and developed.     The final results indicate that some mountainous regions of Tehran Metropolis are apt to landslide with middle to high risk. (Apart from strengthening the vulnerable area) avoiding these areas is an important solution to decrease damages caused by landslide.

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The best path to development is the primary focus on the potentials and threats of the environment and accordingly efficient use of the land. In this regard, it has a closely relation between agricultural and rural development and natural resources. The type of land use is a main factor in soil erosion and sediment production in the watersheds. In this research, it has been studied and evaluated the soil erosion in the Aleshtar plain catchment with aim of developing agricultural exploitation.

This study is based on PSIAC model. The PSIAC method has been designed based on the estimating of sediment potential with 9 important effective factors contains surface of the earth, soil type, weather conditions, runoff conditions,  topography,  land cover, Land use, current erosion condition, slope of river erosion and sediment transportation in the soil erosion. In the process of this research using geographical information system (GIS), the mentioned data analyzed, integrated, and finally layers of information were prepared. Followed by extraction of units, erosion zoning of the studied area has been implemented.

The total area of the studied area is 80305 hectares and is located in the northern parts of Lorestan province (southwest of Iran) and geomorphologic features are  almost mountainous and 39.65% of their area are mountains and hills. The maximum altitude is 3600 meters; the minimum is 1500 meters. and the average height of 2116 meters. Its climate type (based on De Marten method) is Mediterranean climatic pattern exists and  the average annual rainfall is 506 mm. The Aleshtar City is the only urban center in the area but there are 208 villages. The economy of the settlements is based on agriculture (farming, gardening and animal husbandry).

     Based on the findings of this research, 37.92% of the total land area of the basin is eroded (classes I, II, III). The land consists mainly of low slope and plain basin and is suitable for plantation (I). In this zone, 98 rural settlements (47.11%) are located. Relatively deep soils and flat are the features of these lands so the rate of erosion is low (II). 84 rural settlements (40.38%) are classified in this class. Shallow soils, these lands need to have conservation measures and can be managed under the operation of arable, rangeland, forest and resorts (III). 1 rural settlement (0.48%) is located in this class of erosion. 62.09% of the total basin land is located in the classes IV and V. A total of 25 rural settlements (12%) are located in this class. These lands under certain conditions can be planted; because erosion in the land is relatively high and the limitations in comparison with class III is more. Therefore they need more protection operations for exploitation. Also in these lands that are located in the high topography of the basin; erosion is extreme (Class V), which makes arable exploitation impossible.

    Generally the land use in Aleshtar basin is faced to erosion limitation, so the control of the soil erosion and soil conservation and water resources management are essential. However, the locations of the most rural settlements were based on low to moderate erosion zones which indicates that the ancient has had a traditional preparatory thinking.

    As a general recommendation, it can be said that in any location, including rural and urban settlements, along with the development of agricultural activities, attention to the erosion and zoning is essential.

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The process of urbanization and development in high-risk areas such as river banks has increased the vulnerability of urban communities to environmental hazards. The banks of Khoshk River in Shiraz is one of these areas. These hazards are two parts : hazards resulted from river and waterways erosion (destruction, transportation and sedimentation) and the hazards resulted from floodings over the surrounding urban areas.

In order to prepare the literature review for this study, the various books, theses and articles were applied. Also, in order to determine the spatial position of this section, the Satellite Images and Google Earth pictures were used. The Global Positioning System (GPS) was also applied for the field observations such as collecting spatial data, extracting the kind of formations, Geological structures and faults. ArcGIS and Global Mapper 16.2 were also used for data processing and mapping.

 The geomorphological hazards in Khoshk River bank were evaluated in two parts:

1. The evaluation and analysis of the role of river and flooding processes in creating the environmental hazards for Shiraz.
2. The evaluation and analysis of the role of humans as the intensive factors of riverine and floods hazards in city.

 The evaluation of longitudinal profile in the river indicates that when the stream is entered to plain, the water moves with more speed because of faults and high steepness over the  Drake alluvial fan. One indication of this process is the presence of coarse sands and angled gravels. In this part, the erosion of riverbank is much higher than the erosion of river bed. In this section, the longitudinal profile of the river has a regular trend of concave and convex sections due to the erosion in convex parts and sedimentation in concave parts. In addition, there is a balance between deposition and digging process. The erosion is very intensive in regions where arc meander is close to  the flooding plain of the bank and causing the destruction of all facilities.

 The longitudinal profile in the river indicates that the height and slope of river has been reduced from North West to Maharloo River. The average slope of the river is 2.40%.

         In order to determine the role of flooding in creating risks for Shiraz, the floodwater discharge data were collected from Regional Water Organization. Furthermore, in order to understand the role of maximum discharge values, various experimental relations were used in the basin. The un- ordered development of urban areas especially in the north west, destruction of natural areas intensified the amount of  runoff and reduction of vegetation cover.

 The pick values of maximum discharges in Khoshk river  with the return periods of 50 and 100 years waere estimated 115m³/s to 131.4m³/s respectively which may result in overflowing of water on the streets. The human factors include the construction of bridges on the river, fencing river with stones and construction of beach, construction of bypasses for public transportation and reducing the traffic in the riverbed and trespassing to the river bed in Shiraz caused the overflowing of water from the river. The last floods in Shiraz occurred in 1987 and 2002 that caused major losses to the houses and commercial places close to Khoshk River. In order to analyze parts of river that are close to the town and have more important influences on the hazards and disasters, the satellite images of khoshk river basin in the town were taken and the river was classified in three sections with regard to risks level, river morphology and river classification based on its hazards for close areas as high risk (Maali abad Bridge limits to Fazilat Bridge and Sardkhaneh Bridge to Maharloo River), low risk(Tange sorkh to Maali abad Bridge) and medium risk (Fazilat Bridge to Sardkhaneh Bridge).

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In the present era, most cities have been faced with numerous problems. But the environmental dimension has been more challenging. Many urban professionals constantly seek to present effective solutions in order to prevent damage to the environment. Thus, theories, models and many views in this subject have taken, including livability approach derived by the school of sustainable development. So today, as one of the views livability approach is rooted in the theory of sustainable development has been focused on, and the above approach can cause problems in multiple cities. In this research, Region 17 of Tehran as the most problem area, was selected; and the overall goal of this study is assessing the livability of the Region 17’s neighborhoods, and the objective aims are including the assessing of livability dimensions, i.e. the environmental, the historical pattern, the urban management policies, the social, services, activities and facilities, the urban economy at the local level and identifying the livability homogeneous clusters and assessment the impact of livability’s variables, dimensions and indicators in that area. According to the study of the history and theoretical foundations of livability, the most important dimensions, indicators and items related to livability were extracted and the all selected dimensions and indicators, rooted in history and theoretical basis of their livability. In the present study include the following six dimensions of environmental, historical pattern, urban management policies, social, services, activities and facilities, urban economy with 20 indicators and 94 items were considered and the pattern of research in terms of goal, is cognitive; in terms of nature and method, is comparative – assessment; and about location of territory is Tehran’s Region 17, in respect of timing, is temporal and related to the 2015. Combined data collection method is combined0 (documents, survey) and it is the type of quantitative-qualitative data (questionnaire). The data used in the research is preliminary data that were obtained by questionnaire. The statistical society are the residents and citizens of Tehran’s Region 17 who are questioning. The necessary actions to operationalize the research was conducted in several stages: 1) Adjustment of questionnaire (using five Likert scale ranging from very low to very high range, verifying the validity by experts, verifying the performance reliability of the questionnaire by using the Cronbach's alpha in software of SPSS as a result 0.8), 2) Determining the sample size and sampling (400 samples determined by Cochran formula, using multi-stage sampling), 3) Entering data into SPSS software and doing the statistical tests (parametric statistical tests such as one sample T-test, ANOVA, Friedman) analyzing the data by SPSS and statistical tests of one sample T-test, ANOVA, Friedman, represents the undesirable od livability and its dimensions, the difference between neighborhood in terms of livability and more economic effectiveness on the livability of Region’s 17 and its neighborhoods, 4) The showing of spatial diagrams of research findings and preparing the livability’s maps by using ArcGis software and interpolation method. Ultimately, according to the findings and viewpoints of researchers and field observations, it can be concluded that the causes of problems in this area should be within the region and neighborhoods, it's time to overcome the situation that has been searched. In other words, the root of the problems in the above range is due to its geographical bed’s situation and other substrate characteristics. The meaning of geographical bed’s situation, climatic and tectonic characteristics of the area and the order of the micro-feature is the problems with the nature of the social, economic, administrative, infrastructure etc, so that were formed following the influx of population. Until two important problems raised in this region is not considered to be flows: 1) Geographic bed features, 2) the capacity of Region 17 for accommodation of population and services to them.

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Introduction
Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), is the lowest part of the atmosphere. Its behavior is directly influenced by its contact with earth surface. On earth it usually responds to changes in surface radiative forcing in an hour or less. In this layer physical quantities such as flow velocity, temperature, moisture, etc., display rapid fluctuations (turbulence) and vertical mixing is strong. Above the ABL is the "free atmosphere" where the wind is approximately geostrophic  while within the ABL the wind is affected by surface drag and turns across the isobars. The land use/cover changes affecting the surface radiative forces lead to ABL spatio-temporal variation. The main object of this study is to analysis the association among ABL height and built-up spatial growth in Kermanshah city.  
Data and methods
Multi-temporal satellite images from Landsat imagery data for 1990 to 2015 series of sensors TM, and OLI (Landsat 5 and 8) were taken from USGS database. Data of the Atmospheric Boundary layer height (ABL height) for the city of Kermanshah also were taken during 1990- 2015 from ECMWF – Eran-Intrim website at 0.0125 ° spatial resolution. Firstly, we analysis the temporal trends of ABL height of Kermanshah in summer and winter using linear regression in 0.95 confidence level (P_value = 0.05). The built up area of Kermanshah has been extracted from TM and OLI images using supervised classification method and maximum likelihood classification(MLC) algorithm in GIS image analysis. The Pearson correlation analysis has been used to reveal the relationship between annual ABL height variation and built-up growth of Kermanshah.
 Result
The results of long term trend of Built up growth of Kermanshah that extracted using MLC algorithm as can be seen in figure 1 indicated that the built up area in Kermanshah has been growth by 1.02 square kilometer annually.According the figure 2, The results of annual trend of ABL height in summer and winter also reveals that in summer there is no significant trends in ABL height while in winter the significant increasing long term trend has been observed in ABL height.  

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Geography and the Paradigm of Sustainable Development
 
Extended Abstract
Geography and sustainable development
The relation between society and environment has gone through different phases. During the years before the World War II, the environmental determinism controlled this relation. However, after the 1950’s the anthropocentrism replaced the environmental determinism and humans began to overuse the nature in such a way that nature lost its sustainability and many hazards and crises occurred. These destructions were so intense and widespread that some researchers compared with the episodes of geologic time and named the era beginning from 1970’s the Anthropocene epoch. During this period, the planetary boundaries were crossed in some areas such climate change, nitrogen cycle and biodiversity. Climate change has created most of other hazards.
To overcome these problems in 1978 the Brandtland report   announced the sustainable development as not to spend resources more than the nature’s production capacity and not to pollute the nature more than it can assimilate. In other words, the nature should remain in its sustainable state so that the future generations can live with no limitations. The principles of the sustainable development were defined in the earth summit of Rio in 1992 such as social equity, economic viability, and environmental sustainability. These principles were broken down in 17 goals. The Rio conference asked all countries to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030. 
Methodologically the sustainable development requires integrated multidisciplinary approach to investigate the complex system of human- environment in different temporal and spatial scales to achieve the social equity, economic viability, and environmental sustainability. For this reason, many disciplines such as natural resources, environmental sciences, ecology and geography have contributed to the field. Different data from natural resources, human needs and drivers and environmental changes are required to process in very complicated models. In addition to different variables, the hazards are very important component of the sustainable development research, which also requires multi-aspect complicated approach and models. Spatial dependency is another aspect of sustainable development as it differs from place to place in many characteristics. In brief, from the spatial perspective the sustainable development is an integrated multi-approach research about the human-environment system to establish the sustainability on the earth. All of the related fields should study the sustainable development in collaboration with each other. However, the geography due to its long history of studying the relation between human and environment and its spatial dependency is the best single scientific field which can afford studying the sustainable development. Since the earliest times geography has developed quantitative methods, spatial techniques such as geostatistics, and environmental ethics to conserve the nature and human prosperity. The multi approach and systematic works are the main characteristics of Geography. On the other hand, Geography’s vision of defining the location for human’s activities while saving the nature’s sustainability covers the sustainable development completely. Therefore, geography is the overarching field for the sustainable development and it is the main intention of geographers to research and implement the sustainable development to reduce the environmental hazards and develop the sustainable environment for all the human beings at present and in the future. Geography studies the sustainable development through three steps including spatial analysis, spatial planning, and spatial management. In addition, geographers should learn different skills such remote sensing, multivariate statistics and above all develop a common language between different branches of geography.
 
Keywords: geography, sustainable development, environmental ethics, human nature relationship, Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, sustainability.
 
 

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Abstract
During the recent decades the discipline of geography has lost its priority and position to some degree in Iran. Most of the graduates could not enter into the work in the universities and other organizations. The human-environment system, the main area of geographical specialty - has experienced many crises and hazards among which the global warming and climate change being the most destructive.  This means that the ongoing curriculum is not working well and needs to experience a fundamental change. To implement this operation some points should be cleared out: The hazardous condition of the world and especially Iran, the education history and state of geography in Iran, and the relation between geography and sustainable development of the world. The discipline of geography has changed its approach according to the circumstances of each period several times. For example, at the beginning of the twenty-century due to the dominance of the environmental determinism, the dominant approach of geography was the relation between man and environment. But since the 1970’s the earth has encountered with different hazards and crises to the extent that it is named as the period of Anthropocene. Accordingly, the dominant approach of geography during this Anthropocene era is to identify and solve the hazards and crises and lead the man- environment system towards the sustainability as once was requested by the secretary general of the United Nation.  In this regard the geography should adopt the sustainable development concepts and goals. For this reason, the geography of Iran should make a switch from its very specialized approach to a relatively wholistic view and pay more attention to the human- environment paradigm. To implement this order, the following assumptions should be considered.

1. The applied objective of the discipline should be defined as “locating the suitable place for the living and activities of man without endangering the sustainability of the natural environment.  This objective is not clear at the present curriculum. Defining this objective will clearly show students what is their job after finishing the career.
2. The main vision of geography education is the creation of the sustainable geographical space or environment.
3. The research approach is problem solving. Because most of the laws and concepts are identified and defined. Due to the hazardous nature of the earth system geographers should identify the problems and research to solve them via geographical thought and knowledge.
4. The terrestrial unit for working is region. This is very important concept in geography. We cannot prescribe one sustainability procedure for all of the world. But we do one for each region. When regions became sustainable, all the world will be sustained.
5. In any region the hazards and crises will be identified and described through the spatial analysis methods and will be conducted towards sustainable human – environment system. This monitoring is composed of the stages of spatial analysis, spatial planning, and spatial managing.
6. All of the geography subjects and materials are necessary for sustainable development goals. The only criteria will be added is the environmental ethics in all of the geography activities and applications.
7. Instructors and students should be familiar with the techniques of integration and multi-dimension modelling.
8. All geography graduates will respect the nature and its resources and should consider the environmental ethics during their academic career. They should be able to identify and solve the environmental problems through the geographical thinking. Geographical thinking means asking geographical question, gathering geographical data, processing the data with geographical (spatial) methods, and presenting the results in the geographical forms, i.e., maps. All the graduates should be creative and critical and should have the power of scientific challenging and discussions.
9. Geography is one independent and overarching discipline and we will offer only one total geography in bachelor level. The master career can be specialized according to the applied objectives of the societies. The doctoral program is also one integrated discipline. The specialty of graduates will be defined according to their dissertation.
10. The subjects include the fundamental courses such as physical geography and sustainable development, regional courses such as the human geography of Iran, technical courses such as remote sensing, GIS, and statistics, the applied courses such as evaluating the natural resources, and so for. The students with any high school background should pass all the courses with high quality so that after graduation they have the potential to analyze the human- environment problems and recommend the required solutions.

Key words: geography curriculum, sustainable development, geography of Iran, twenty first century, environmental ethics, geographical thinking, Geography and sustainable development.

 

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