EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

What are the main human pressures affecting Iran’s protected areas?

Ehsan Rahimi () and Pinliang Dong ()
Additional contact information
Ehsan Rahimi: Environmental Sciences Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University
Pinliang Dong: University of North Texas

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2022, vol. 12, issue 4, No 2, 682-691

Abstract: Abstract More than 75% of terrestrial ecosystems are affected by human activities. To protect biodiversity, humans have created protected areas around the world. However, these areas are also not safe from human activities. In this regard, determining the degree of vulnerability of protected areas to human footprint can provide valuable information to the managers of these areas and help better protect and manage these areas. This study aims to assess the vulnerability of protected areas in Iran to human infrastructure and tries to identify the most important human activities affecting these areas. Also, this study shows how subjective selection of the zone effect of human activities affects the accuracy of the results of vulnerability assessment in four scenarios. Using multi-criteria evaluation, we examined the effects of infrastructures such as roads, railways, cities, industries, mines, and agriculture on Iran’s protected areas and increased the zone effect of these infrastructures in four scenarios. Our results showed that on average 5.1–30.3% of the extent of protected areas are affected by the negative effects of human footprints. We found that irrigated farming and roads have the most negative impact on protected areas in Iran. In addition, if the zone effect of these infrastructures reaches 10 km, more than 50% of the area of protected areas in Iran will be affected by their adverse effects. In the absence of irrigated farms and roads, the vulnerability of protected areas will be reduced from 5.1 to 1.5% and 2.6%, respectively. Our results also show that national parks and wildlife refuges were less vulnerable than protected areas. However, as the zone effect of the infrastructure increased, the national parks would become more vulnerable than wildlife refuges.

Keywords: Human pressures; Iran’s protected areas; Vulnerability assessment; Zone effect; Multi-criteria evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13412-022-00785-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:12:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s13412-022-00785-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13412

DOI: 10.1007/s13412-022-00785-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences is currently edited by Walter A. Rosenbaum

More articles in Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences from Springer, Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:12:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s13412-022-00785-7