Journal of RS and GIS for Natural Resources: 5 (4)

Open Access Article

1 - Land capability assessment to determine suitable tourism area using analytical network process (ANP)
Hamideh Aliani Sasan Babaie Kafaky Amir Saffari seyed Masoud Monavari

In this research, in order to allocate land for development of ecotourism, a multi criteria evaluation method based on analytical network process and fuzzy logic was used. The ecological criteria such as soil, climate, water resources, geology and physiographic, as well More

In this research, in order to allocate land for development of ecotourism, a multi criteria evaluation method based on analytical network process and fuzzy logic was used. The ecological criteria such as soil, climate, water resources, geology and physiographic, as well as socioeconomic criteria, such as land use, distance from road, distance from built-up areas, distance from sightseeing attractions, and distance from tourism facilities were identified and then quantified using fuzzy method. In order to generate a land use map, remotely sensed data of OLI land sat 8 dated was used. Field data were collected in 2015. Thereafter, the factors influencing the allocation of lands to ecotourism were ranked using analytical network process method. Finally, using a weighted linear combination (WLC) operator, all information layers were combined in a ArcGIS®10.1 environment, followed by preparation of the final map of the ecotourism development power. In order to carry out the accuracy assessment, 20% of homogeneous land units which were suitable for ecotourism were randomly selected. The result of field check proved that 94% of the identified land units were completely compatible with natural condition. The obtained results indicate that the ecological criteria account for 0.64 of the final weight in total, suggesting the greater involvement of ecological criteria in developing functionality for ecotourism. The results from the quantitative method (WLC) showed that 75.2% of the study area are capable for ecotourism purposes, although the degree of culpability is varied. The rest (24.8%) has no suitability for ecotourism. From the capable areas, about 30.32% are highly capable for different ecotourism purposes. Concomitant use of fuzzy logic and ANP method for prioritization of criteria provides a more logical and flexible condition for land evaluation based on WLC method. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

2 - Determination potential habitats (Anchusa strigosa) using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and GIS in Dezful
Majid Sadeghinia Mehdi Tazeh Zahra Jafari Koroush Kiani

Native plant development is one of the ways to restore degraded rangelands. In Dezful, Anchusa strigosa is a medication species which is one of the region’s main exports. Due to habitat degradation of this species by overgrazing and rangeland degradation, by consi More

Native plant development is one of the ways to restore degraded rangelands. In Dezful, Anchusa strigosa is a medication species which is one of the region’s main exports. Due to habitat degradation of this species by overgrazing and rangeland degradation, by considering ecological demands, its habitat can be developed. The aim of this study was to determine the potential sites for development, according to the criteria of Anchusa strigosa climate, soil and topography using geographic information systems and hierarchical analysis. For this purpose, In 2015, the spatial data for species presence was used as potential locations for growth. Part of the habitat of this species was extracted from studies using ground and the points which were grabbed. The first point map of the field was prepared by visiting the areas and habitats, and then current biophysical information was extracted. For completing the information, from other sources, the ecological demand of species was extracted and combined with ground-based data. The six criteria map were prepared, classified and standardized in ArcGIS®10.1. As the weight of the layers is not identical, to prioritize the areas of potential habitat, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to weight the criteria. The results showed that of total area 464547.3 ha, 31% accounts for good habitat, 38%, average habitat and 7% poor to very poor habitat. The results also showed that the significant dip weight and the minimum weight is most significant measure that shows no inclination and most valuable to the growth of this species. The results can be used to modify the operation of the ranch and mapping of suitable areas for development use. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

3 - Evaluation of desertification hazard severity in the Jaz-Murian region
Mojtaba Soleimani Sardo Ali Tavili Abbas Alipour Seyed Mostafa Hashemi

Desertification is a phenomenon occurred in arid and semi-arid because of climate changes, human effects and leads to decrease of ecosystem productions and its potential. In this research, the sensitivity of the Jaz-Murian watershed to desertification was evaluated usin More

Desertification is a phenomenon occurred in arid and semi-arid because of climate changes, human effects and leads to decrease of ecosystem productions and its potential. In this research, the sensitivity of the Jaz-Murian watershed to desertification was evaluated using Environmental sensitive area scheme (ESAs) model. For this goal, the work unit map was extracted from Landsat (8 OLI) imagery (2015) by maximum likelihood classification algorithm. In each unit, the indices related to climate, soil, vegetation and land management criteria were weighted on the basis of ESAs methodology and expert advice and combined by calculating geometric mean of indices. The results showed that the ESAs value obtained from 1.46 to 1.72, it means that the study area is classified in the critical class of desertification, so that 3136 km2 and 12299 km2 of the area has been felt in C2 and C3 classes, respectively. Salty clay lands (ESAI=1.83), Playa (ESAI=1.78) and sandy lands (ESAI=1.72) had the most sensitivity to desertification that needs to consider as the priority of the management strategies in order to introduce de-desertification projects. Moreover, the climate and land management criteria were shown the more effects on desertification process and also must be focused by scientists who would like to improve the local methods of desertification monitoring and needs to be considered to introduce management plans. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

4 - Habitat potential modeling of Astragalus gossypinus using ecological niche factor analysis and logistic regression (Case study: summer rangelands of Baladeh, Nour)
Farhad Borna Reza Tamartash Mohammadreza Tatian Vahid Gholami

This study has been done with the purpose of modeling and prediction of the habitat Astragalus gossypinus map using Logistic regression (LR) and Ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA)  in summer rangelands of Baladeh, Nour in Mazandaran province. To achieve this o More

This study has been done with the purpose of modeling and prediction of the habitat Astragalus gossypinus map using Logistic regression (LR) and Ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA)  in summer rangelands of Baladeh, Nour in Mazandaran province. To achieve this objective, environmental map variables were prepared with the help of ArcGIS®9.3 techniques in cell size of 10 × 10. Also, 80 site as well as the presence or absence of species was recorded by sampling classified-random. For each sampling site was recorded information about the presence or absence of species and environmental variables, and the relationship between species distribution and environmental factors was determined by using logistic regression and ecological niche factor analysis, and forecast maps the distribution of the Astragalus gossypinus was produced in the study area. According to LR results, Elevation, pH, organic carbon, average temperature of the wet season and average temperature during the dry season were the most important environmental factors influencing the distribution of the species. According to this model, variable aspect, sand Percent, TNV of soil, precipitation in the wet season and average temperature during the coldest season were used as influential environmental variables. Evaluate the correctness statistical models were performed by using the kappa coefficient and ROC area under the curve plots. Value indices, respectively 0.42 and 0.78 for the logistic regression model and 0.84 and 0.92 for the ecological niche factor analysis, which represents that profile model shows higher accuracy than the discrimination group models in the study area. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

5 - Assessing groundwater vulnerability in Ramhormoz aquifer using a GIS and DRASTIC Techniques
Pouriya Moradi Hassan Rouhi Kazem Rangzan Nasrollah Kalantari Nazanin Ghanbari

Aquifer vulnerability assessment to identify areas that have a potential contamination of water re-sources management, is very important. One of the rudimentary and important ways to prevent groundwater contamination is the identification of vulnerable areas and applied More

Aquifer vulnerability assessment to identify areas that have a potential contamination of water re-sources management, is very important. One of the rudimentary and important ways to prevent groundwater contamination is the identification of vulnerable areas and applied its results for land use management. In this study, the vulnerability of Ramhormoz aquifer evaluated by an Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and Modified DRASTIC based on GIS. In the DRASTIC model the map of seven hydrogeological characteristics affecting groundwater pollution (depth to water, net recharge, aquifer media, soil type, topography, the impact of vadose zone and hydraulic conduc-tivity) was combined using Geographic information system (GIS) and aquifer vulnerability map was prepared. In order to overlaying the data layer tree methods (DRASTIC-DRASTIC, DRASTIC-AHP and AHP-AHP methods) have been used. Nitrate concentration data of groundwater have been used for model validation. The results show that, except the southeast that have a high vulnerability, other parts of plain have a low to moderate vulnerability. In the study area, DRASTIC-DRASTIC and DRASTIC-AHP methods have a better results rather than AHP-AHP method. The correlation coefficient between Q index and nitrate concentration in DRASTIC-DRASTIC, DRASTIC-AHP and AHP-AHP methods is obtained 0.97, 0.96 and 0.81, respectively, which confirmed the results. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

6 - Investigating the relationship between temperature, net radiation flux by biophysical properties and lanuse using LandSat 8 satellite imagery
Mohammad Karimi Firozjaei Majid Kiavrz Mogadam

Due to high heterogeneity in the land surface properties including variation in the type of surface coverage, varied topography conditions and placement in different geographic locations, investigating the relationship between temperature and net radiation and listed pa More

Due to high heterogeneity in the land surface properties including variation in the type of surface coverage, varied topography conditions and placement in different geographic locations, investigating the relationship between temperature and net radiation and listed parameters of properties has great importance. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between temperature and net radiation surface with Indexes biophysical properties and land use in the region. For this purpose, LandSat8 satellite image, MODIS water vapor product and digital elevation model map of the city of Sari are used. In order to calculate the surface temperature, single channel algorithm, net radiation from Surface energy balance algorithm for land (SEBAL) mountain algorithm and the extraction of different surface properties from Tasselled cap transformation (TCT) Indexes were used. also, the combination of Maximum likelihood classification methods and decision tree are utilized to classify Image. Net radiation has a direct relationship with Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), Greenness and Wetness parameters and inverse relationship with mean correlation coefficient 0.8 with NDBI, Albedo, Brightness and surface temperature parameters. In this study, the correlation coefficient of relationship between Wetness, Greenness and Brightness indicators and net radiation surface is 0.94. The Built up lands with an average 600.38  have the lowest net radiation and forest lands with an average 759.5  have the highest net radiation flux in the region. The results show that using remote sensing data and considering the TCT parameters related to biophysical properties of surface are very useful to assess the temperature and net radiation of the region. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

7 - Identification of the area under cultivation of Saffron using Landsat-8 temporal satellite images (Case study: Torbat Heydarieh)
Majid Rahimzadegan Mostafa Pourgholam

The aim of this research is the identification of Saffron fields with Landsat-8 Satellite images in Torbat Heydarieh. In this regard, two approaches were utilized. The first approach was dealing with implementation of neural network, support vector machine, Mahalanobis More

The aim of this research is the identification of Saffron fields with Landsat-8 Satellite images in Torbat Heydarieh. In this regard, two approaches were utilized. The first approach was dealing with implementation of neural network, support vector machine, Mahalanobis distance, the minimum distance, maximum likelihood and parallelepiped classification methods to achieve land cover map. The second approach was to use  normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) in the greenness peak time range of saffron. To prepare field data, coordinate and land cover class of 2587 points (1463 as training sample and others as tested) in a region with at least 30 m same land cover on January 25th, 2015 and May 9th, 2015 were recorded using a GPS receiver. Furthermore, statistics presented by ministry of Agriculture Jihad in the 2014-2015 crop year was used for evaluation. Two measures, including Kappa coefficient and overall accuracy were used for evaluation of the results. Support vector machine classification with overall accuracy of 95% and a Kappa coefficient of 90%, was the best method of the first approach. It shows a difference of about 18% in saffron area comparing with Jihad statistics. On the other hand, NDVI as the best method of second approach shows an area of 7118 hectares which comparing with Jihad statistics (7550 hectares), shows the error of 5.7%. Hence, the results indicate the performance of temporal vegetation indices in identification of saffron fields according to its phenology. Manuscript profile

Open Access Article

8 - Flood prone areas mapping by using statistical index and weights of evidence models (Case study: Madar Soo watershed, Golestan)
Safoura Siahkamari Hossein Zeinivand

The aim of this study is preparation of potential flooding maps in Madar Soo watershed in Golestan province. For this end, the statistical index and weights of evidence models, various data layers and geographic information systems were used. The results of the applied More

The aim of this study is preparation of potential flooding maps in Madar Soo watershed in Golestan province. For this end, the statistical index and weights of evidence models, various data layers and geographic information systems were used. The results of the applied models indicated that, among the effective factors for flooding, the elevation lower than 500m, flat slope, drainage density more than 0.33 (km/km2), distance from river of 500-2000m, malicious soil type, quaternary rocks and agricultural land with the greatest weight, were the most important factors in the Madar Soo watershed. The r Manuscript profile

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