Analysis and Evaluation of Effective Factors in Pedestrian Streets Promotion with Environmental Design Approach in the Framework of Greenways Planning the Cse study: Mashhad metropolis

Pedestrian streets is a tool related to social health, urban lifestyle, urban economy, environmental quality. In recent decades, these urban spaces have been highly regarded by urban planning experts for various reasons, including the creation of human scale, increasing dynamism and social interactions, environmental issues, personal and social health, creating freshness and attracting tourism. In the Mashhad metropolis, due to issues such as tourism, the increase number of cars 4.5 times in the last decade, the increase amount of environmental pollutants caused by transportation, the increase number of sedentary and overweight citizens and in general the unsuitability of livability of this metropolis the need to support clean and human-centered transportation has felt. Creating a desirable and environmentally friendly pedestrian axis can play an important role in improving pedestrian streets. What can play an effective role in planning these spaces and to cover the mentioned goals of urban planners, is to propose a solution that can be adapted to the material and spiritual needs of citizens. For this purpose, using the questionnaire and methods of analysis AHP and SAW, we have examined the sights and expectations of the urban community of an optimal pedestrian axis that effective in a new urban lifestyle. The ratio of increased daily activity of citizens after the addition of greenways to the urban transportation system is more than 3 times. In addition the results show that greenways can be a platform for change in urban lifestyle and the tendency to walk and daily activities and increase the economic value of the land by 23%. In addition, the use of vegetation, the allocation of a special bicycle lane and the consideration of crowded places in the planning of pedestrian spaces can play an important role in increasing the desire of citizens to be present in these spaces on foot

Investigation on development potential of endangered species of Taxus baccata at Golestan Province, based on GIS technology (Case study: Pooneh Aram reserve)

Taxus baccata is a native endangered coniferous species of Iran. Although the species had a wide range distribution in the past, but now has limited habitats. Therefore, further studies of the species spatial distribution and its possible development and extant by plantation projects, is necessary due to vital support of this medicinal species. The aim of the study was to compare the Yew’s ecological requirements with the ecological characteristics of the studied area at Golestan province in order to identify the most appropriate sites for forest plantation. For this reason, the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method, based on analysis of hierarchical process (AHP) was used. At first, the 10 required natural criteria which affect T. baccata’s growth, including altitude, slope gradient, slope aspect, geology, relatively air moisture, precipitation, temperature, soil type, plant cover and canopy cover density were considered and at the end after identifying their weight, final map of the area suitable for the Yew’s plantation was developed, based on the Multi Criteria Evaluation model. The results showed that from the studied total area of 30554 hectares, the classified lands for the Yew’s plantation were as follows: 2482 ha. Excellent, 10982 ha. fine, 10909 ha. moderate and 6181 ha poor. Overall, it’s easy to specify the areas suitable for Yew’s plantation as well as to develop a registered program and plan for its plantation at the Caspian forests of Iran

Capability investigation on spectral images of Ikonos from leaveless season for Box (Buxus hyrcana Pojark.) understory distribution mapping in the Hyrcanian forest (Case study: Khiboos-Anjilsi Buxus reserved area, Mazandaran)

As one of the most important understory evergreen species in Hyrcanian forests of Iran, information on the distribution of  Box  (Buxus Hyrcana Pojark.) are essential for both forest research and practice. Here, the capability of very high spatial resolution IKONOS satellite imagery acquired in leaf-off condition was tested for mapping Box distribution in a part of Khiboos-Anjili forest reserve in Mazandaran province. The IKONOS imagery was geometrically corrected with a georefrenced panchromatic Pleaides scene, which was orthorectified using 3D ground control points obtained using differential GPS (RMSE less than one pixel). Reference data samples from three classes of non-forested area, deciduous stands without Box understory and deciduous stands with Box understory were recorded using DGPS-supported field survey. By means of a number of vegetation indices, classes seperabilities were evaluated on main and synthetic image channels by partitioning 75% training area and transformed divergence. IKONOS image was classified using both main and best-selected bands and a number of nonparametric (Maximum Likelihood, Mahalonobis distance, Minimum distance to mean and Paralell piped) and parametric (Suport Vector Machine) classifiers. Then the classified images were assessed using 25 percent of unused sample points. Results of validation using the 25% left-out test data showed the highest performance by SVM algorithm compared to other algorithms, with overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of 97.87% and 0.96, respectively. The results also showed the potential of IKONOS imagery from leaf-off season has to map Box trees in understory layer