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Following the unbalanced development and overexploitation of the countrychr('39')s watersheds, land fragmentation has become a major concern for the conservation of ecosystem services and land health. For this purpose, the present study was planned to evaluate and compare the landscape connectivity indices of KoozehTopraghi Watershed as one of the ecologically susceptible watersheds located in Ardabil Province. To this end, the landscape connectivity was investigated according to both structural and functional viewpoints, based on the green patches (rangelands and orchard) distributed at 36 sub-watershed areas. The mentioned indices were first calculated using the Fragstats Software and graph theory at each sub-watershed; then, they were standardized according to interval standardization between zero and one in order to consider the scale effect and draw a comparison in the same variation range. Therefore, the landscape connectivity was calculated, classified and mapped for each studied sub-watershed and the whole watershed. Structural connectivity results showed the high level of landscape connectivity between green patches in all studied sub-watersheds. In addition, the results showed that the landscape connectivity was obtained with the mean and standard deviation of 0.50 ± 0.52, being varied from 0.50 to 0.97. The results also proved that out of the 36 sub-watersheds located in the KoozehTopraghi, only 15 sub-watersheds had natural lands (orchard and rangelands). Also, the sub-watershed 27, with the highest value of landscape connectivity (0.97), had the highest priority.

Soil characteristics have spatial variations. Understanding spatial variations of soil characteristics is among the effective factors in sustainable land management. A better understanding the effects of management factors on soil characteristics need to quantify their heterogeneity and variability. This research was conducted with the aim of investigating spatial variations of some soil characteristics such as soil texture (clay, silt and sand), calcium carbonate (CaCo3), soil acidity (pH), and soil salinity using geostatistic methods. For this purpose, 252 soil samples (from 0 to 20 cm depth) were prepared from the study area and physical and chemical properties of soil were measured. After normalizing the data, the half-shift of each of the studied characteristics was calculated and the best model was fitted to them. Then, the characteristics of the study were estimated through different methods of conventional Kriging, simple Kriging, discrete Kriging and Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) using ArcGIS software. The accuracy of the estimation was evaluated using the mean absolute error (MAE), the mean bias error (MBE), and the root mean square error (RMSE). The results showed that the best model for the acidity was the spherical model and for the other measured variables was the exponential model. Moreover, the conventional CoKriging method for clay, calcium carbonate and acidity (pH), IDW method for silt and soil salinity, and conventional Kriging method for sand were better than other methods used and provided more accurate estimates.

Soil contamination produced by Cd and Pb released from vehicles is a serious environmental problem. Lead as a result of using leaded petrol fuels and cadmium in the car tire is introduced into the environment through vehicle depreciation and traffic. This study aimed to investigate the spatial distribution of heavy metals such as Pb and Cd at the roadside soils of Zabol - Zahedan route. 252 soil samples were taken from a depth of 0 -20 cm and the concentration of total lead and cadmium metals, physicochemical properties of soil including pH, EC and organic matter were measured. The contamination assessment of soil was done through using enrichment factor and geoaccumulation index. Metals’ spatial distribution maps for heavy metals concentration were used kriging methods. The mean concentration at 0, 50 and 100 meters, respectively, was 2.12, 2.03 and 2 mg kg-1 for lead, which is less than the global mean (25 mg kg-1) for this metal, and respectively 0.21, 0.21 and 0.20 mg kg-1 for cadmium, which was lower than the global average (0.53 mg kg-1). The results of the geospatial analysis showed that both variables were anisotropic and the exponential model for lead and Gaussian model for cadmium had the best fit.Interpolation map's analysis showed that the cadmium and lead has geological and human origins. In fact, these metals naturally exist in soils, but human activity has caused the accumulation of these metals in the soil.

Following the unbalanced development and overexploitation of the country's watersheds, land fragmentation has become a major concern for the conservation of ecosystem services and land health. For this purpose, the present study was planned to evaluate and compare the landscape connectivity indices of KoozehTopraghi Watershed as one of the ecologically susceptible watersheds located in Ardabil Province. To this end, the landscape connectivity was investigated according to both structural and functional viewpoints, based on the green patches (rangelands and orchard) distributed at 36 sub-watershed areas. The mentioned indices were first calculated using the Fragstats Software and graph theory at each sub-watershed; then, they were standardized according to interval standardization between zero and one in order to consider the scale effect and draw a comparison in the same variation range. Therefore, the landscape connectivity was calculated, classified and mapped for each studied sub-watershed and the whole watershed. Structural connectivity results showed the high level of landscape connectivity between green patches in all studied subwatersheds. In addition, the results showed that the landscape connectivity was obtained with the mean and standard deviation of 0.50 ± 0.52, being varied from 0.50 to 0.97. The results also proved that out of the 36 sub-watersheds located in the KoozehTopraghi, only 15 sub-watersheds had natural lands (orchard and rangelands). Also, the subwatershed 27, with the highest value of landscape connectivity (0.97), had the highest priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]