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In Khuzestan province of Iran, the number of traffic passes made by heavy farm machinery in sugarcane land preparation varies depending upon field conditions, ranging from a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 16 passes annually. To reduce energy, time and cost, it is imperative to use conservation tillage as well as controlled traffic systems. The objectives of this research were to develop, and evaluate a combined strip deep tillage machine equipped with a two-level deep tillage implement including a dual sideway-share and a winged subsoiler, cum with a set of discs. For optimizing the dual-sideway-share subsoiler, the effects of share rake angle (7.5 and 15°) and length (150 and 200 mm) on the implement field performance were examined. Also, to optimize the winged subsoiler, it was tested with its wing having different lengths (0, 200, 250, and 300 mm). Finally, the performance of the developed combined strip deep tillage machine was compared with a conventional subsoiler used for deep tillage in the fields. The results showed that the optimized combined strip deep tillage machine should be equipped with the dual sideway-share subsoiler having a share with a 7.5° rake angle and 150 mm length, and the winged subsoiler with 250 mm length for its wing. The results showed that the specific resistance of the developed machine as compared to the conventional subsoiler decreased by 34%. Therefore, the machine has higher efficiency and is an environmentally friendly implement for sustainable sugarcane production in southwest Iran.
 

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Soil, a 3-dimensional component of the landscape, or simply a natural body in a soilscape with a given geopedological setting, was modeled by Jenny as S = f (Climate, Organism, Relief, Parent material, Time). To map such a complex body, the concept ‗pedon’ –the smallest volume that can be recognized as a soil had to be defined. Classically, soil is known to function as provider, controller, regulator, mechanical support, and as a filter to protect the quality of water, air, and other resources. The intention of this paper is to argue, with the help of several examples of soilscape, in (semi-) arid regions of Tunisia, Morocco and Iran, some other functions of the soils, namely those of being an archive (‗history book of the landscape‘), a guide (in soil management), and a ‗predictor‘ (sensing soil health), in other words, soilscape speaks out: an account of the past, present and future.

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 Statement of Problem: Rural landscapes, as continuing cultural landscapes, represent the natural personality of their community over time, landscapes that change under the influence of cultural and natural currents in their context. Human interaction with nature and the continuity of these landscapes have created several outstanding values in rural landscapes that express tangible and intangible values or in other words, its semantic importance. International documents emphasize the need to develop a conceptual framework and identify these values as a key component in the process of conservation of these landscapes, so that any effort to protect and regenerate rural landscapes, in principle, helps to preserve culture and sustainability of a land.
Aims: To identify and categorize the values of rural landscapes in order to regenerate and sustainably protect such environments and transfer their collective knowledge and cultural meanings to future generations.
Methods: This research first defines the concept of cultural landscape and formulates the conceptual framework and position of rural landscape by reviewing international documents and conventions and examining the views of experts. Then, according to the studies, the values in rural landscapes are classified and explained and finally, a model for regenerating and preserving rural landscapes is presented.
Findings: In this study, the values of rural landscapes divided into two groups: natural and tangible values ​​and cultural and intangible values. Natural and tangible values ​​including environmental, physical, economic and educational values, ​​and cultural and intangibles values include cultural, spiritual, social, and recreational ones. Although in some cases, values ​​are a combination of both, so they are very difficult to refine.
Results: Considering the existing values, a model for recreating and protecting rural landscapes has been presented, which in order to coordinate with the change in the prioritization of these values, it is necessary to pay more attention to their dynamic and multifunctional aspects.

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Increasing roads become the serious conservation threats to the animal populations. The most direct effect of roads on them is deadly collision with vehicles, leading to high levels of injury or death. Estimates of detectability of road-killed higher vertebrates have been determined but not for the invertebrates like butterflies, although they are frequently killed insects group on roads. This is the first comprehensive mortality census of road-killed butterflies in Nepal. The main aim of this study was to estimate the detectability of road-killed butterflies in Mahendra Highway, the busiest highway in Nepal. We established eight transects, each of 500 m long within the randomly selected forest and human settlement landscapes. Pearson’s correlation was calculated to test the link between the number of road-killed and living butterflies. All together 1000 butterfly individuals were counted throughout the study periods including road-killed and living butterflies. Among them, 364 butterflies were counted raodkilled whereas 636 butterflies were living. Forest landscape contributed higher number in both road-killed and living butterflies than human settlement landscape. Also, the number of butterflies killed on the roads were significantly correlated with number of living butterflies on the road. Our results indicate that road has the significant impact on loss of butterfly population. Also, higher the number of living butterflies more will be road mortality. The public awareness and maintaining the habitats with high forbs cover, gardening, avoid depositing asphalts, etc. in the vicinity of road can denigrate the rate of road mortality of butterflies.

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Building stocks are the most important physical capacity for infill development and planning for their preservation, restoration and improvement in order to re-use has been an important chapter on urban conservation during the last decades. According to official statistics, parallel to paradigm shifts in the field of urban regeneration and active conservation, using old buildings in European cities has increased and the demolition and reconstruction of historical and aged structures have been pushed into the margin. In a comparison one could easily see how many of the old structures in the Iranian cities have been demolished in recent years and an important number of characteristic buildings have vanished from the urban context easily; what have been substituted has no relevance to the tangible and intangible values, lost within the process. The process of adaptive re-use is an outstanding criteria in the way of safeguarding physical and architectural identity and strengthening the ‘placefulness’ of historic fabrics and urban cores. In the contemporary literature of urban regeneration, some positive characteristics and principles like social and environmental sustainability, sense of place, planning mechanism upgrading, economical efficiency and built environment authenticity are attributed to the adaptive re-use of aged structures. Meanwhile the possibility to re-use the aged structure is something that should be considered in a technical and timely manner. The life cycle of building materials and the course of inevitable decline have a tremendous role in how and when a structure could be regained and reintroduced to the urban life cycle. This article revises the process of adaptive reuse and its benefits and parallel to the subject, proposes a new equivalent for the title of ‘Adaptive Reuse’ in Persian which would refer to the both parts of the term in a literary and semantic manner. Introducing the ‘Adaptive Reuse Potential’ model would be a solution for tracing the decay curve of aged structures and assessing the building adaptive reuse design and obsolescence criteria. This model and its subordinate equations demonstrate the point of maximum potential and the effective useful life of a building subject to adaptive reuse. As the Adaptive Reuse has also a policy-making aspect, estimating the condition of the buildings and calculating the potential that determines whether they could be brought back to the cycle as suitable infrastructures having the peciularities needed for a contemporary role is very crucial to the course. Implementing this model in a case study reveals its condition of obsolescence and the potential for the recovery of an aged structure into a new life cycle. An old and architecturally valuable building in the historic-modern core of Tehran [Lāleh Hotel in Lālehzār-e-no Ave.], has been assessed by ARP model and confirm this hypothesis that there are many potentially good buildings capable to be re-used in the inner parts of Iranian cities which have been fallen into oblivion and if the chance of undertaking adaptive reuse projects is missed, there will be an inevitable scenario for them to be demolished and reconstructed; a deep pity for the future generation of citizens disconnected of their glorious architectural background.

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The present study analyses the effects of multifunctional areas (MA) for three years (2013–2015) on an intensive multi-crop farm in Portugal. The implementation of MA resulted in a wide range of enhancements in the insect community, such as significant effects as a reservoir, allowing an increase of 102.47% in the number of species and 97.64% of individuals. MA play an important role in conservation strategies and help increase the population of rare and threatened arthropod species.

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The decline of biodiversity, specifically of insects is one of the major topics in conservation biology. In several countries of Europe, recent studies have shown a severe decline in species number and biomass of insects. In most countries of much higher diversity, much less is known about the state of the insect fauna. In this study, we focus on the acridid grasshoppers of Iran as an indicator taxon for diversity decline in a high diversity region. We used data of two surveys to suggest a change in species number between 1963 and after 2000. In the surveys before 1963, the species diversity across multiple localities in Iran was much higher compared to more recent faunistic studies. While this data is not statistically analyzable as the sampling is not completely comparable, the trends show a clear pattern of decline, which likely reflects the reality, conforms well to individual observations of less frequent encounters in the field and matches global patterns of insect decline. However, more standardized quantitative surveys are needed to generate statistically analyzable data. Potential reasons for the observed decline are severe draughts as a result of global climate change, habitat pollution, and destruction for construction and mining and especially overgrazing. Management actions need to be urgently put into place to stop the negative trends. Future studies need to document and test if these are taxon-specific trends or universal patterns in the region.
 

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Chalcidoidea play an important role in the biological control of many agricultural pests. The present study determines and compares the diversities of this superfamily in four ecosystems in the Lake Urmia basin. It is the largest hypersaline lake in the world with a large basin of different ecological conditions in northwest Iran. These stations were: Khajeh (K) and Tasuj (T) in Lake Urmia Basin (LUB_in) and Khoda-Afarin (KA) and Tikme-Dash (TD) out of their (LUB_out). Four months of Malaise trapping in these habitats resulted in a total of 512 specimens from 11 families of Chalcidoidea, including 6, 9, 10 and 10 families in K, KA, T and TD, respectively. Maximum abundance was observed in the T station with 192 and the minimum was in the K station with 38. However, the families, Encyrtidae and Chalcididae have maximum abundance in T and KA, respectively. The maximum activity of chalcidoid wasps was observed during June-August. The majority of the species were belonging to the family Mymaridae (25%), in LUB_out habitats peaked at 47 specimens in TD during the sampling period, while the corresponding LUB_in habitats peaked at 40 specimens in T. The two LUB_out habitats had greater community similarity (60%) than found between in and LUB_out habitats (42%) and diversity of chalcidoid wasps in LUB_out was found much more than LUB_in. Biodiversity studies showed that the KA station has the greatest values of diversity, evenness, and richness of Chalcidoidea. This station is located outside of Lake Urmia basin with the warmest and most humid climate and forest ecosystem on the margins of the Aras River.

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Centranthera tranquebarica (Spreng.) Merr. (Orobranchaceae) and Mallotus repandus (Rottler) Müll. Arg. (Euphorbiaceae) are reported as new host plants of Junonia orithya (Linnaeus, 1758) (Nymphalidae) and Rapala manea (Hewitson, 1863) (Lycaenidae) butterflies from Paschim Bardhaman district of West Bengal, India. Schleichera oleosa (Sapindaceae), a deciduous tree, is reported as new host plant of Coladenia indrani (Moore, [1866]) (Hesperiidae) from Bankura district of West Bengal, India. Defensive mechanism of Junonia orithya larva by rolling itself into a tight spiral is also observed.

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The fall webworm, Hyphantria cunea (Drury, 1773) (Lepidoptera, Erebidae), is one of the most important pests of forest trees in northern Iran. In order to identify the native parasitoids of this pest a survey was conducted in Guilan province, in 2019. The larvae and pupae of the fall webworm suspected being parasitized, were collected from different host trees and wood piles, and reared under laboratory conditions until the parasitoids emerged. This pest was found parasitized with five species of Hymenoptera, Brachymeria lasus (Walker, 1841) (Chalcididae), Chouioia cunea Yang, 1989 (Eulophidae), Psychophagus omnivorus (Walker, 1835) (Pteromalidae), Pimpla rufipes Brulle, 1846, Virgichneumon dumeticola (Gravenhorst, 1829) (Ichneumonidae), and four species of Diptera, Compsilura concinnata (Meigen, 1824), Exorista larvarum (Linnaeus, 1758), Pales sp. (Tachinidae), and Megaselia scalaris (Loew, 1866) (Phoridae). Among them six species (e.g., P. rufipes, V. dumeticola, B. lasus, E. larvarum, C. concinnata and Pales sp.) are newly reported as the parasitoids of H. cunea from Iran.

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The aim of this study is to make an inventory of the fauna of the Odonata in Theniet El Had National Park, which helps managers to make appropriate decisions for the conservation of these species. The site is entirely forested (Cedrus and Quercus species) with numerous intra-forest natural environments (clearings, grasslands, rocky habitats, springs, pools and ponds, etc.), this mosaic of habitats harbours a remarkable wealth of fauna and flora. Our study focused on the natural and artificial temporary forest ponds, scattered throughout the park, which are of biological and ecological interest for a very wide range of insects, most notably the hemimetabola. These are characterised by a larval stage that is quite different from the adult stage in terms of habitat and lifestyle, namely odonates, where the larvae are aquatic whereas the adults have an aerial life. The inventory of odonates was carried out through monthly surveys of 8 water bodies (7 forest ponds and one hill reservoir) during one year, from March 2017 to February 2018. This preliminary inventory allowed us to inspect 240 individuals of odonates belonging to 18 species i.e. 11 genera and 5 families. The species recorded at the end of this study are the subject of a cartographic representation showing their distribution at the local scale (in the park) and at the national scale.

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Here, the species richness of Campopleginae, a diverse subfamily of the Darwin wasps was studied in an almost organic damask rose plain located at 2600 m a.s.l., the south of Iran. Sampling was done using four Malaise traps for six months from April–October 2019. The total sampling efforts were 18 trap months. The integrated approach was used to assess the sample completeness profile, to infer true diversities of entire assemblages via asymptotic diversity estimates, to standardize the sample coverage via rarefaction and extrapolation, and to infer diversity via an evenness profile. I also used Homogenous, Homogenous (MLE), Chao1, Chao1-bc, iChao1, ACE, ACE-1, 1st order jackknife, and 2nd order jackknife to estimate the species richness of the studied Campopleginae community. Malaise traps yielded 491 individuals belonging to 24 morphospecies. Diadegma majale (Gravenhorst, 1829) included 64.7% of the total individuals collected, representing the highly dominated species. The estimated sample completeness profile showed that our data covers 59% of the total species in this community and thus 41% of species are undetected. The values for Shannon and Simpson diversity indices are 4.53 and 2.29, respectively. The models and non-parametric estimators estimated the species richness of Campoplegines from 24 – 50 species. This study provides a wealth of baseline data for the subfamily Campopleginae in the south of Iran in terms of biological control and conservation.

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A vast number of tropical and subtropical mites belong to the family Tarsonemidae Canestrini & Fanzago, 1877, with the tribe Tarsoenmini under subfamily Tarsoneminae having the most diverse assemblage. In order to better understand the distribution, community structure, and host specificity of these mites, it is important to investigate the Tarsonemini mite fauna of India, particularly in the highly biodiverse state of West Bengal. A total of 1154 mite specimens were obtained from 69 distinct plant species belonging to 44 families and distributed over six agroclimatic zones in West Bengal. The mites were classified into 8 distinct genera and 38 morphospecies. We developed bipartite trophic networks for Tarsonemini mites for the first time to show how these different communities of these mites are associated to various host plant species in six different agroclimatic zones. Different network descriptors such as Connectance, H2, Niche Overlap and Robustness were calculated from the mite-plant networks of six agroclimatic zones. Northern Hill Zone had the highest diversity followed by New Alluvial and Teesta-Terai Zone whereas, Red Laterite Zone had the least diversity of mite species. More than 70% Tarsonemini mites were found as generalist plant inhabitants which is consistent with their epiphytotic microbivorous feeding strategy.

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The book "Lepidoptera Iranica" is a comprehensive and meticulously researched publication that explores the butterfly and moth fauna of Iran. Edited by Hossein Rajaei and Ole Karsholt, the book includes contributions from seventy-three Iranian and international researchers over 13 years. The book provides a historical review of lepidopterology in Iran and discusses the general patterns of Lepidoptera fauna in the country. It also estimates the number of Lepidoptera species waiting to be discovered in Iran and includes a gazetteer of elusive localities of Iranian Lepidoptera records. The final chapter is a comprehensive catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Iran, including a checklist of all 4,812 known species, as well as information and notes on their taxonomy, distribution, and biology. The book serves as an important tool for scholars, preservationists, and enthusiasts, and highlights the importance of continued research and conservation efforts in the country.

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The current study gives more information on Lepidoptera (butterfly) diversity and their food plant resources in the conifer woods of Shimla Water Catchment Wildlife Sanctuary, Himachal Pradesh. The study was carried out during the three distinct seasons; summer, monsoon, and autumn from March 2019–April 2022. A total of 1650 butterflies, representing 68 species and 6 families were recorded. The Nymphalidae comprised the greatest number of species (28 species), followed by the Lycaenidae (15), Pieridae (13), Papilionidae (7), Hespiradie (4) and Riodinidae (1). Species abundance and richness were more in mixed forest type which owing water and grass-cover availability supported most unique butterfly assemblages as compared to pure conifers and oak forest. The months from April to November harbor the greatest abundance of species. An overall reduction in species abundance was seen from December through January and until the end of March. This study provides an understanding of butterflies and has inspired additional investigation for the restoration of forest habitats in this protected area. The current study on diversity shows the importance of preserving biodiversity and monitoring climate change. It offers a basic identification, gathers data from a comparative viewpoint, allows synthesis, and develops and stimulates ideas and hypotheses that are applicable to other fields.

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Aims: This study aims to evaluate the Soil Hydrological Response (SHR) under LU/LC using a field-oriented and remote sensing database in the Jiroft watershed, Iran.
Materials & Methods: Land use maps were extracted from Landsat images using the supervised classification method for 1987-2017. The results were validated against field data from 100 points, where we found the Kapp index to be greater than 80%, indicating an acceptable land-use classification. The LU/LC map was then projected for 2047 using the CA-Markov model. The Curve Number (CN) for each land use was determined from superimposing LU/LC and the soil hydrological group map. The Soil Conservation Services-Curve Number method (SCS-CN) was employed to estimate runoff.  
Findings: Good (densely vegetated) and moderate rangelands had a decreasing trend (i.e., -2.94% and -3.64% in 1987- 2017), while croplands, orchards, residential, and saline areas expanded (by 1.46%, 0.88%, 0.33%, and 7.21%). We found that agricultural lands, saline lands, and residential areas would increase by 0.75, 5.5, and 0.13%, by 2047, respectively.
Conclusion: We found a considerable increase (up to 6 mm increase) in runoff depth in some land-uses and more than 3.4% increase in the area of the high runoff producing class (IV).  We believe that higher runoff production potential and more intense and short rain showers should be considered seriously in terms of possible flash floods in the future.

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This paper reports a new addition to the national bumblebee fauna of the Indian Himalayas. The newly recorded species viz., Bombus cryptarum (Fabricius, 1775) (Hymenoptera, Apidae) is fully described from the Gurez Valley (Jammu and Kashmir) and Panamik (Ladakh) in the Western Himalayan range. Males of the B. cryptarum have thoracic dorsum and T2 lemon yellow without black hairs. Gonostylus with the anterior apical process with long hairs and penis valve greatly broadened and flared outwards. With the addition of a new record, the Indian Himalayan region is now represented by 57 species of bumblebees. The species diagnosis, current distributional range, and host plants of this species are also provided.