Isfahan is a historical city with UNESCO registered World Heritage suffering from air pollution as the major environmental challenge. The present research aims to assess the social and environmental concerns associated with air pollution in Isfahan via exploring the relationship between effective parameters on environmentally friendly behavior among Isfahanian citizens using factor analysis. A questionnaire including the citizens’ knowledge and their experience on air quality impacts, as well as their perception about the level of air pollution, the pollution sources, and its control and self-protection actions was designed and applied to a sample of 388 individuals. The results showed the dried river-substrate of Zayandehroud river, followed by improper municipal management, and the high number of vehicles and mega-industries are the most important contributing factors to air pollution, respectively. These findings were corroborated through correlation analysis between mean AQI values and responses. The findings indicated that people’s awareness about air pollution, its impacts, and their willingness-to-pay for reducing air pollution are increasing as the education attainment increases. Improving the quality of gasoline and the cars as well as developing the public transportation were the main requests of Isfahanian citizens from managers and decision-makers for air pollution mitigation. We conclude that the pro-environmental behaviors of people significantly depend on their perception of air pollution as public engaging in air pollution control plans will be obtained by an increase of their awareness about air quality status, its health-related consequences, and high level of citizen’s responsibility.

The magnitude and duration of ongoing global warming affects tree growth, especially in semi-arid forest landscapes, which are typically dominated by a few adapted tree species. We investigated the effect of climatic control on the tree growth of Persian oak (Quercus brantii Lindl.), which is a dominant species in the Central Zagros Mountains of western Iran. A total of 48 stem discs was analyzed from trees at three sites, differing in local site and stand conditions (1326 to 1704 m a.s.l.), as well as the level and type of human impact (high human intervention for the silvopastoral site, moderate for the agroforestry site, and low for the forest site). We used principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the common climatic signals of precipitation, air temperature, and drought (represented by SPEI 1 to 48 months) across the site chronologies. PC1 explains 83% of the total variance, indicating a dominant common growth response to regional climatic conditions that is independent of the local environmental conditions (i.e., forest stand density and land-use type). Growth–climate response analyses revealed that the radial growth of Q. brantii is positively affected by water availability during the growing season (r = 0.39, p < 0.01). Precipitation during April and May has played an ever-important role in oak growth in recent decades. Our study provides evidence that hydroclimatic conditions control tree-ring formation in this region, dominating the effects of topography and human impact. This finding highlights the great potential for combining historical oak samples and living trees from different forest stands in order to generate multi-centennial tree-ring-based hydroclimate reconstructions.

Urban trees' biomonitoring of pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) yields pertinent and useful data for air pollution management. The aim of this study was to biomonitor PAHs in pine (Pinus eldarica Medw.) trees in the city of Isfahan and identify their sources. In total, 34 samples of outer bark of the trees were collected and their contents of 16 EPA PAHs were analyzed. With a median value of 136.3 ng/g, the total PAH contents in tree barks varied from 53.4 to 705.2 ng/g. The average values of the diagnostic ratios for Ant/(Ant + Phe), Flu/(Flu + Py), BaA/(BaA + Chr) and IP/(IP + BP) were 0.19, 0.49, 0.45 and 0.49, respectively, revealing the PAHs majority source of pyrogenic. Meanwhile, principal component analysis showed two major types of PAHs sources including pyrogenic (fossil fuel combustion and industrial activities) and petrogenic (uncombusted) sources. The average ratio An/(An + Phe) and Flu/(Flu + Py) in bark samples was close to their relevant ratios in ambient air which demonstrated the potential use of this approach for biomonitoring of PAHs.

Aims: Climate change and environmental factors are two factors affecting the ecosystem and life cycle of vector insects. In this study, the effects of climatic elements and environmental factors on cutaneous leishmaniasis in Kashan were studied. Materials and Methods: This study has adopted an analytical-descriptive method. Climatic data were compared with 3949 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis from 2007 to 2019 using SPSS 22 software and Pearson correlation. Furthermore, the prevalence of cutaneous leishmaniasis cases in Kashan city was displayed on the land use maps, land cover map, rainfall map, thermal classification map, and digital elevation model and then was investigated. Results: Pearson correlation analysis showed a negative correlation between cutaneous leishmaniasis cases and spring temperature while a positive correlation with total rainfall and winter rainfall was observed. Investigating the spatial distribution of cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Kashan city was observed that the frequency of this disease was higher near Kashan desert belt from Abuzeidabad to Abshirin, the landfill areas, around the agricultural fields, the main roads, and the outskirts of the city. Conclusion: The frequency of cutaneous leishmaniasis has a significant negative correlation with reduction of temperature in spring to the desired level for the activity of sandflies. Rainfall has also caused a significant increase of this disease. Autumn has the most cases and spring the least ones. In the spatial distribution of the disease, a clear relationship with the desert areas, where the disease reservoir mice were living, and the agricultural fields, where sandflies reproduced and had activity, was observed.