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Due to mismanagement in the field of use, rehabilitation and allocation of water resources, the return and use of local indigenous technologies and knowledge and also their updating, plus localization of modern technologies make it inevitable. Since one of the important elements of planning and management in the field of water resources is to identify the most appropriate criteria or effective factors in it, so in this research with extensive study of internal and external sources in the field of indigenous knowledge and also using the opinion of specialists and experts of Yazd Province, the variables were first identified through Delphi method and then a questionnaire was prepared. Thereafter, the effective variables were examined and evaluated using appropriate methods such as exploratory factor analysis and principal component analysis. The research findings indicate that the six factors of protection and stability, management, holistic, cost-effectiveness, compatibility, and dynamism have been the primary factors and criteria of indigenous knowledge in the management and planning of water resources in Yazd Province. Variables such as biodiversity conservation, proper management, cost-effectiveness, and wildlife conservation have been also more important compared to other variables.

Regulating ecosystem services provided by urban forests are of great importance for the quality of life among city dwellers. To reach a maximum contribution to well-being in cities, the urban regulating ecosystem services (URES) must match with the demands in terms of space and time. If we understand the matches or mismatches between the current urban dwellers' desired quality conditions (demand) and the supply of URES by urban forests (UF) in the cities, this will facilitate integrating the concepts of ecosystem services in urban planning and management, but such an assessment has suffered from major knowledge limitations. Since it is complex and problematic to identify the direct demands for URES and the spatiotemporal patterns therein, improving the demand indicators can help to determine the actual requirements. In this paper, a methodological approach based on indicators is presented and demonstrated for two important URES: air quality improvement and global climate change mitigation provided by urban trees and shrubs. Four air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets were used and compared to supplies of the URES in Tabriz, Iran. Our results show that the mean contribution of the URES supply to air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets is modest. Hence, in Tabriz, there is a strong mismatch between demand and supply. Mismatches at the city scale will have to be reduced by both a reduction in pollutant emissions and an increased provisioning of URES supply through urban greenery. The presented assessment approach and the results for Tabriz make it explicit how different the demands and supplies of the two studied URES are, and we expect similar mismatches in many other cities. Therefore, our approach, relatively simple but still realistic and easy-to-apply, can raise awareness about, and the utility of, the ecosystem services concepts for urban planning and policymaking.