Environment Assessment
Mohammad Reza Veysi; Pourya Pirmoradi; Delaram Garshasbi
Abstract
Introduction: In recent years, sustainable environmental development has become one of the most important topics in various sciences. One of the primary causes of global warming and environmental instability is the excessive production of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide has the greatest amount and effect ...
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Introduction: In recent years, sustainable environmental development has become one of the most important topics in various sciences. One of the primary causes of global warming and environmental instability is the excessive production of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide has the greatest amount and effect among greenhouse gases. Urban transportation is increasingly emitting carbon dioxide. In recent decades, urban transportation has also been an indispensable part of the city and urban life with the increasing expansion of cities and population growth. In many cities, especially less developed cities, urban transportation as well as traffic have currently become a constant challenge and left many environmental effects. The increasing number of city trips has resulted in air pollution, noise pollution, and weather phenomena. The emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, is one of the most important destructive effects of urban transportation, which ultimately causes global warming and climate change. Therefore, if the production of carbon dioxide is more than the city's carrying capacity, it will endanger environmental sustainability in the long term. The ecological footprint index is used as an integrated method to calculate the absorption capacity of the city based on carbon production and to evaluate environmental sustainability in many countries of the world at different levels. The ecological footprint is generally a measure of how much land is needed to absorb the carbon produced by humans. The ecological footprint shows the environmental sustainability or unsustainability of the range determined based on the volume of carbon produced. Therefore, it is necessary to calculate the ecological footprint of activities that pollute the environment. Since the city of Bojnurd has experienced a significant increase in population and sudden expansion in recent years, particularly after becoming the capital of the province and considering the multifold increase of urban trips in this city, the purpose of this research is evaluation of environmental sustainability for urban transportation patterns of Bojnurd by ecological footprint technique.Materials and Methods: The present research with the descriptive-analytical method evaluates the environmental sustainability of intra-city transportation in Bojnurd. To this end, the required data, including the number of trips, daily movements, and the average distance traveled per trip for each travel pattern by referring to documents, reports, as well as the relevant organizations, has been collected. Then, the ecological footprint of Bojnurd urban transportation is calculated.Results: Finally, by comparing the per ecological footprint capita of Bojnurd urban transportation with the world standard, it is found that out of the five modes of transportation, private cars, taxis, buses, minibuses, and motorcycles, only two models of buses and minibuses are environmentally sustainable. The private car is the most unstable model whose per ecological footprint capita is nine times larger than that of the global standard per capita. This research shows that the transportation system of Bojnurd is environmentally unstable because the volume of carbon dioxide produced by this system is much higher than the capacity of absorbing carbon dioxide by the city's lands.Discussion: Due to the increasing demand for using private cars and the trend of migration to the city, these problems will increase in the future and the process of bad ecological effects on the city of Bojnurd will accelerate, which requires urgent measures and careful planning.
Reza Fathi; Amirhossein Sayyahzadeh
Abstract
Population growth has increased the need for energy especially use of fossil fuels, which in turn is lead to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is a type of greenhouse gas that leading to enhance global warming. This global warming can put plant and animal habitats in danger and change ...
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Population growth has increased the need for energy especially use of fossil fuels, which in turn is lead to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is a type of greenhouse gas that leading to enhance global warming. This global warming can put plant and animal habitats in danger and change climate patterns, resulting in floods, droughts and severe destructive storms. One of the ways that reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is geological carbon dioxide storage, which requires a porous reservoir with an impermeable sealing caprock that laying on the reservoir. The importance of caprock is to inhibit the movement of submerging carbon dioxide, saline and the other existence materials preventing leakage of these materials into the upper formations. Caprock should be able to withstand in-situ stress changes and physical and chemical properties changes. The purpose of this paper is to review geological carbon dioxide storage methods and the mechanism of caprock in carbon dioxide storage. The research method is an overview of related sources and references. According to the results of this study, the sealing pressure of the caprock should be distinguished before the injection process and during the injection process should not exceed a certain amount. Likewise, before the injection of carbon dioxide, its temperature should be proportionate to the temperature of the reservoir to avert caprock failure and it is better to take the geochemical, geomechanical, thermal and flow path properties in experimental and simulation works into consideration for a better understanding of caprock’s behavior and structure.