Reza Sokouti
Abstract
Crop growth in natural habitats is the result of the biological function of various factors. Soil is the most influential factor on the yield potential of a habitat that can lead to the soil fertility and yield degradation. This study aimed to determine the relationship between crop yield and soil properties ...
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Crop growth in natural habitats is the result of the biological function of various factors. Soil is the most influential factor on the yield potential of a habitat that can lead to the soil fertility and yield degradation. This study aimed to determine the relationship between crop yield and soil properties used to calculate the soil quality indicators in the semi-arid rangelands of Shohada-Valley as an example in West Azerbaijan Province The slope aspect with four directions, slope classes with five classes and vegetation layers were overplayed to prepare working units of 1:50,000 scale. Physical, biological and chemical properties of soil samples from 0-30 cm of topsoil were determined through required analysis. Landscape Function Analysis (LFA) was done and yield of dominant species was calculated in maximum flowering time by direct collection method. Effective soil properties on plant production were determined using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the mathematical relations between crop yield and soil parameters was computed by stepwise multiple regression. Results showed that mean values of soil landscape index is 0.8, stability index was equal to 76.9, the permeability index was 57.1 and the nutrient index was equal to 69.1 in 28 map units. The average of total production was calculated 1535.24 kg /ha of dry matter. Three components having a latent root above one, explained about 78 percent of the variance using factor analysis,. The outcome variables for evaluating soil quality index, organization index, nutrient cycling index, salinity and bulk density, were determined. A significant correlation of 63% was achieved between soil quality indicators and crop production,. Using soil quality index a coefficient of determination of 64 percent was computed after applying a mathematical crop production model Mean Bias Error of -0.02, error of 8% and the efficiency of the model of 0.66, provide a suitable application for interpretation function of rangelands. Therefore, resulted model is suitable for estimating range production in semi-arid and cold semi-arid steppe habitats.
Somaiye Moghimi; Yahya Parvizi; Mohammad Hossein Mahdian; Mohammad Hassan Masihabadi
Abstract
Soil organic carbon is one of the most important soil characteristics, and any changes in its content and composition, affects soil physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Enhancing soil organic carbon improves soil structure, increases water and nutrients in soils, reduces soil erosion and ...
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Soil organic carbon is one of the most important soil characteristics, and any changes in its content and composition, affects soil physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Enhancing soil organic carbon improves soil structure, increases water and nutrients in soils, reduces soil erosion and degradation and thus greater productivity of plants and water quality are expected in watersheds and ultimately soil and ecosystem reclamation happens. Climatic, topographic and managerial factors affect soil organic carbon content. In local scale, climatic factors have not high efficiency on soil organic carbon and topographic factors play more important role compared to climate on soil organic carbon variability. The objective of this study was to predict and evaluate the effects of topographic factors such as elevation, slope percent, aspect, hill shade, and curvature on the soil organic carbon content of a rangeland in Mereg watershed, Kermanshah, Iran. Stepwise Multi Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) were employed to develop models to predict soil organic carbon. AMulti-Layer Perceptrons (MLP) ANN withback-propagationerror algorithm was applied to this research.Theresult showed that themulti linear regression and ANN models explained53and 77percent of the total variability of soil organiccarbon, respectively. The calculated RMSE and MBE were 0.40 and 0 for the MLR and 0.16 and 0.003 for MLP models. Results indicated that designated ANN model with 5-9-1 arrange was more feasible than multi linear regression for predicting soil organic carbon. Elevation with 0.79, hill shade with 0.64 and slope percent with 0.24, were identified as the important factors that explained the variability of soil organic carbon.
Leila Mehdizadeh; Farrokh Asadzadeh; Abbas Samadi
Abstract
Particle size distribution of sediment is one of the key factors which affects many other physical and chemical characteristics of the sediments. In this study, particle size distribution of the sediments trapped behind successive check dams was evaluated. Two waterways (G1 and G2) were selected in Noshan ...
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Particle size distribution of sediment is one of the key factors which affects many other physical and chemical characteristics of the sediments. In this study, particle size distribution of the sediments trapped behind successive check dams was evaluated. Two waterways (G1 and G2) were selected in Noshan region of Urmia which have three and four check dams respectively. In each waterway, particle size distribution of sediment samples was compared with the original soil of the adjacent hill slope. Results indicated that the sediments have loamy-sand to sandy texture and have coarser particles than the adjacent soil samples. Selective deposition of sediment particles was observed in half full successive check dams of G1 waterway and the sediments of the check dam located at the downstream have a similar particle size distribution with adjacent soil sample. In filled dams of G2 waterway, considerable amounts of particles coarser than 0.124 mm in diameter were passed through dams. Some mathematical models were used to describe the particle size distribution of sediment samples and performance of them was evaluated by several efficiency criteria. Hierarchical cluster analysis of models, based on selected efficiency criteria, indicated that the Fredlund, ORL and ONL models have good performance in describing the particle size distribution of sediment samples. Coefficient of determination for these models was 0.99 and the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) for these models were -44.13, -43.92, and -41.46 respectively. It can be concluded that these models are applicable for quantifying the particle size distribution of sediment samples.
Abolghasem Dadrasi Sabzevar; Nader Jalali; Ebrahim Gohari
Abstract
Productivity of the floods in the country which suffering from a severe shortage of water resources, is inevitable and flood spreading in areas prone water is one of the simplest methods for efficiency of flood. Identification of suitable areas for flood spreading by traditional methods usually is very ...
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Productivity of the floods in the country which suffering from a severe shortage of water resources, is inevitable and flood spreading in areas prone water is one of the simplest methods for efficiency of flood. Identification of suitable areas for flood spreading by traditional methods usually is very expensive and takes up time. Using GIS and RS can reduce such costs and increase the speed and accuracy. The study area is part of the provinces of Khorasan Razavi and north Khorasan which included the cities of Sabzevar, Esferayen, Jagarm, Kashmar, Bardeskan and Khalilabad. In this study, seven layers, including units of the quaternary deposits, limitation of land use, slope, infiltration rate, runoff, storage coefficient and bed rock depth were selected and analyzed. Map of quaternary deposits was prepared from geological map at scale of 1:250000 and controlled by photo-interpretation. 43 sites were selected by field survey. A Land use restriction was prepared by field Investigation and visual interpretation of satellite images. The slope map was obtained by GIS method, using digital topographic map of the area with 100m interval and 30m Pixel size. Infiltration rate in each area was calculated by double ring test and geoelectric study was used for bed rock depth estimation. Also storage coefficient for each site was calculated by typical table related on soil texture using soil sampling to a depth of one meter. And finally volumes of overland flow were calculated for all sites by Jasten method. Booleain logic, index overlay and fuzzy logic were selected and tested in those areas to mapping suitable areas for flood spreading, using the weighting method. The results show that the fuzzy sum is the best and visual interpretation of RGB742 Integrating GIS, is more suitable to identify and prioritize areas prone to spreading.
Rohallah Taghizadeh Mehrjardi; Fereydoon Sarmadian; Mehdi Tazeh; Mahmood Omid; Norair Toomanian; Mohammad Javad Rousta; Mohammad Hassan Rahimian
Abstract
Recently, researchers are increasingly employed Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) techniques to overcome traditional soil mapping difficulties. Apparently, due to the large heterogeneity of soil environments, sampling may be the most important step in digital soil mapping studies. Therefore, in this research, ...
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Recently, researchers are increasingly employed Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) techniques to overcome traditional soil mapping difficulties. Apparently, due to the large heterogeneity of soil environments, sampling may be the most important step in digital soil mapping studies. Therefore, in this research, we employed three different sampling strategies including Latin hypercube, Fuzzy-K-Means and random sampling to achieve the best spatial distribution of soil samples in an area around 720 km2 located in Ardakan region, Yazd province, Iran. Auxiliary data that used in this study, were including terrain attributes, Landsat 7 ETM+ images and a geomorphologic surfaces map. Based on statistical criteria (i.e. mean and standard deviation), results showed that Latin hypercube is the best sampling method. For instance, in the selected points, the mean of wetness index is 18.19 which is the same as the mean of all area. Similarly, the mean of Multi-resolution Valley Bottom Flatness (MrRVF) in the points selected by Latin hypercube strategy is very similar to all area. Moreover, histogram of auxiliary data in selected points (samples) was more similar to histogram of auxiliary data in all area. Also, the results indicated that a good geographical coverage (Fuzzy-K-Means) does not adequately represent the distribution of the variables. Therefore, Latin hypercube is the best strategy to determine sample locations in our study area and hence, it is recommended that researchers apply Latin hypercube method in future digital soil mapping studies.
Davood Nikkami; Mohammad Hossein Mahdian
Abstract
Rainfall erosivity as one of the major factors of soil erosion is expressed as indexes. The objective of this study is determining the appropriate rainfall erosivity index in Iran and generalizes it by its estimation from more readily available indexes to stations without rainfall intensity data and ...
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Rainfall erosivity as one of the major factors of soil erosion is expressed as indexes. The objective of this study is determining the appropriate rainfall erosivity index in Iran and generalizes it by its estimation from more readily available indexes to stations without rainfall intensity data and to determine the most accurate interpolation method for preparation of its map. For this reason, necessary data were collected from seven soil erosion research plots in Western Azerbyjan, Khorasan Razavi, Zanjan, Semnan, Mazandaran, Markazi, and Yazd provinces, respectively. The rainfall intensities were recorded, as was the sediment yield associated with storm events, and 64 different erosivity indices based on rainfall intensity were computed for these soil erosion research stations. Our founding shows that were the best correlated with sediment than other erosivity index. Further, rainfall erosivity indices, based on the amount of rainfall, were also computed for all soil erosion research plots and synoptic and climatic stations. The results showed that the modified Fournier index had a significant correlation with After normalizing the primary data, semi-variograms were determined and the best model was obtained. Then, different interpolation methods were compared and spline was chosen for drawing the rainfall erosivity map. The output map showed a decreasing trend from west and north to east and south of the country and this trend was correlated with climatic change from humid to semiarid regions.
Hamidreza Peyrowan; Ali Jafari Ardakani; Mohsen Shariat Jafari
Abstract
Downstream of Ghezel-ouzan River from Ostoor to Sefidrood dams with approximately 195 kilometers length studied in this research. For morphological study, the topographic maps and the aerial photos (1955 and 1992) on a scale of 1: 50000 are used. At the first step, the river plan was drawn in both gorge ...
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Downstream of Ghezel-ouzan River from Ostoor to Sefidrood dams with approximately 195 kilometers length studied in this research. For morphological study, the topographic maps and the aerial photos (1955 and 1992) on a scale of 1: 50000 are used. At the first step, the river plan was drawn in both gorge valley and flood plain basin and then geometrical characteristics such as width, wavelength and amplitude of meanders loops, sinuosity, radius and other factors of the meanders measured in two above-mentioned basins. This research showed that, the mean values of the central angle of meanders and sinuosity coefficient of the gorge river is 140.55 degree and 1.46 respectively. It is more than flood plain reach with 105.08 degree mean central angle and 1.22 sinuosity coefficients. Therefore, the river is more meandering in the mountainous reach. Lateral shifting of Ghezel-Ouzan River in flood plain reach showed that 63.3% and 26.6 % respectively occurred to left and right and 10.1 percent to both sides due to braiding. Lateral shifting of Ghezel-Ouzan River at flood plain reach indicates that lateral shifting of the river, occurred mainly toward the left bank, which is agreed to the direction of the tectonic stresses due to the plate tectonic movements. It proves that tectonic factors affect on river pattern even in the erosional reach. In gorge basin hydraulic bed-shear of the river is quantitatively 150 Pascal, whereas, shearing strength of volcanic rocks in gorge valley lies in the order 150 Mpa., i.e. one million times higher. Therefore, the erosional processes could not have formed the gorge valley. To prove this opinion, dip and direction of rock bank joints of the river in gorge basin recorded at field in 10 stations and about 439 joint surfaces. The centerline of the river channel drawn based on the topographic maps, and then, it changed to the series of broken and straight lines at the intervals of 250 m, and then their directions were determined. The rose diagram of rectifying river segments and rock joints of the gorge canal are similar with together. It shows that the river in mountainous basin had neotectonic predesigned pattern and the river current on the bedrock and only it partly can widening its valley.
Mahmood Arabkhedri
Abstract
River bed load is usually estimated as a ratio of suspended load due to difficulty in direct measurement. The ratio of bed load to suspended load can be determined more accurately using reservoir sediment bathymetric information. In this research, two successive top bathymetric maps from reservoirs of ...
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River bed load is usually estimated as a ratio of suspended load due to difficulty in direct measurement. The ratio of bed load to suspended load can be determined more accurately using reservoir sediment bathymetric information. In this research, two successive top bathymetric maps from reservoirs of Dez dam (1983 and 1997), and Minab dam (1985 and 1998) as well as suspended sediment data measured at the inflow were analyzed. After determining the position of delta crest and dividing deltaic and lacustrine parts in each reservoir, the volume of sediment were estimated followed by weight calculation based on sediment bulk density. Then, the influence of factors such as the temporal compactness of deposits, the dam sediment trap efficiency, and the contribution of upstream basin and the sub basins adjacent to the reservoir in sediment production was determined. On the other hand, the suspended sediment yield was estimated in Telehzang and Barantyn gauging stations (at reservoirs inflow) using USBR method. In the next step, the ratio of bed load to suspended load was estimated with two scenarios A) by considering the deltaic and lacustrine sediments as bed load and suspended load respectively and B) calculating the bed load by subtracting suspended sediment estimated in reservoir inflow gauge from total deposited sediment. The BLSLR was overestimated as much as 251 and 348 percent in Dez and Minab dams respectively under the Scenario "B" due to underestimation error of suspended load. Under the Scenario "A", the BLSLRs of Dez and Minab were 45 and 56 percent respectively. Two very important uncertainty factors in this method are the dam trap efficiency and bulk density of deposits particularly the deltaic coarse sediment. By changing the trap efficiency from approximately, 95 percent to 60 percent the BLSLRs were decreased from 42 percent to 23 percent in Dez River and from 53 percent to 27 percent in Minab River. A 14 percent cut in bulk density of deltaic deposit in Minab reservoir causes a reduction of seven percent in the BLSLR. Although, large differences are observed among the results of different scenarios, even the minimum ratios are much higher than 15-20 percent BLSLR that are commonly used in water resources studies.
Mehran Lashanizand; Kianfar Payamani; Eraj Vyskarami
Abstract
Water shortage is one of the major problems in most countries, especially countries with a growing population and Iran is one of these countries. Iran is located in a hot and dry weather and its annual rainfall is one-third of the world. Water shortage and recent droughts have reduced available water ...
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Water shortage is one of the major problems in most countries, especially countries with a growing population and Iran is one of these countries. Iran is located in a hot and dry weather and its annual rainfall is one-third of the world. Water shortage and recent droughts have reduced available water resources. Therefore, managing agricultural water consumption should be considered as one of the most important headlines of water resources management. In this study, irrigation efficiency was computed after measuring water consumption of three agricultural products of wheat, clever and alfalfa.. Results showed that the highest and the lowest of efficiency index of 1.85 and 1.43 belong to alfalfa and clever respectively andirrigation water consuming efficiency were 61.9, 76.01 and 150.1 for wheat, alfalfa and clever, respectively. Also, results demonstrated that efficiency-added product index for all three products of wheat, alfalfa and clever were 6112.7, 6505.2 and 4870.3 Rial/m3, respectively. Finally, according to the result, alfalfa has the highest productivity compared to other products.
Sajad Mirzayi; Majid Raoof
Abstract
Time parameters are adopted in most hydrological and hydraulic models. The most common known time parameter is time of concentration. The present study aimed to choose the best method for estimation of time of concentration in Atashgah Watershed in Ardebil Province. The values of times of concentration ...
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Time parameters are adopted in most hydrological and hydraulic models. The most common known time parameter is time of concentration. The present study aimed to choose the best method for estimation of time of concentration in Atashgah Watershed in Ardebil Province. The values of times of concentration in the present study were obtained by fourteen experimental relations and SCS method in WMS and HEC-Geo-HMS softwares. Mean weight of main channel’s slope and Manning’s roughness coefficient were measured by field operation. In order to evaluate efficiency of the method by using rainfall and hydrometry statistics, three flood events which were equal to rainfalls in terms of time were chosen and time of concentration was determined for these events by graphical method. Estimated and observed times of concentration (2.28 h) were evaluated by relative error percentage and remained mean error. Determination of the relations adopted in the present study indicated that area plays a pivotal role to estimate time of concentration properly. Evaluation of Hata-Vay relations, Kirpich, California, and Yen and Chow hydrographs showed that these methods do not consider area in order to estimate time of concentration; therefore, their estimations are considerably different from observed values. On the contrary, the estimations performed by Passini and Kerby relations were closer to observed values. Results revealed that adoption of more parameters would result in more acceptable results. So, total loss, land use, correction operation, hydrological status and soil hydrological group in addition to parameters as length and slope of the main channel are used to estimate time of concentration in SCS relation. HEC-GeoHMS and WMS models, which are used to estimate time of concentration by SCS method, adopt raster data, which cause higher accuracy compared to traditional methods such as manual method. It is concluded that in Atashgah Watershed, SCS method is suitable for estimation of time of concentration using WMS software with minimum values of remainder mean error values and relative error percentage being 0.05 h and 2.1%, respectively.
