Introduction The rapid growth of the global population has led to a significant surge in water consumption across various sectors such as agriculture, industry, and domestic use. This heightened demand for water has profound implications, particularly in ensuring food security, meeting industrial needs, and providing safe drinking water. However, alongside this population growth, climate change has emerged as a critical factor, altering precipitation patterns and exacerbating water scarcity issues. In response to these challenges, there is a growing need to identify and manage accessible water resources effectively. This involves understanding the complex interactions between different components of the hydrological cycle, including surface water, groundwater, soil moisture, and atmospheric water. Hydrological models have emerged as valuable tools in this regard, offering insights into water availability, flow patterns, and quality assessment. These models play a crucial role in various aspects of water resource management, including mitigating environmental impacts, managing floods, and predicting future water stress scenarios. Additionally, they facilitate the analysis of watershed-scale dynamics and provide a basis for informed decision-making. Global Hydrological Models (GHMs) have gained prominence due to their ability to capture the interconnectedness of water systems across different regions. They enable researchers to assess and predict hydrological processes on a large scale, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of water resource dynamics. Recent studies have focused on evaluating the performance of hydrological models, such as the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model, in simulating river discharge, soil moisture, and precipitation patterns. These evaluations often utilize various data sources, including satellite imagery, to validate model outputs and improve their accuracy. Moreover, the integration of advanced optimization algorithms, such as NSGA-II, enhances the modeling process by optimizing model parameters and improving simulation results. In light of limited ground station data in extensive watersheds, researchers increasingly rely on long-term weather data and modeling techniques to bridge data gaps and improve the accuracy of hydrological predictions. Overall, ongoing research efforts aim to refine hydrological modeling approaches, integrate diverse data sources, and develop robust strategies for sustainable water resource management in the face of growing population pressures and climate uncertainties.   Materials and methods The Heblehroud Watershed, situated in the southern part of the Central Alborz mountain range, covers approximately 326,991 hectares and lies between coordinates 52° 13' to 53° 13' East longitude and 35° 17' to 35° 58' North latitude. It spans across Tehran, Mazandaran, and Semnan provinces. Mount Sefidab, with an elevation of 4047 meters, marks its highest point. The region features a semi-arid climate, receiving 272 mm of annual rainfall predominantly in winter and spring. The Heblehroud River, originating from the northern mountains, serves as the main drainage outlet. The semi-distributed hydrological model (VIC) was employed in this study to optimize the coefficient of efficiency (KGE) in simulating runoff on daily and monthly scales in the state of water balance. The study validated the VIC model using data from the Bonekooh station and applied the NSGA-II optimization algorithm to calibrate soil parameters from 1992 to 1996, considering the impact of watershed management. Soil data were obtained from the HWSD database available on the FAO website and categorized into 36 classes based on physical and chemical soil properties. Land cover data were sourced from the MODIS satellite database and classified into 17 categories according to the IGBP standard. Elevational bands are crucial in the VIC hydrological model for assessing soil water pressure distribution and surface runoff. In the Heblehroud basin, elevation differences can reach several thousand meters, impacting flow estimation. Therefore, using elevation bands derived from SRTM data is essential for accurate simulation. The accuracy of precipitation data from each database at the cell scale was evaluated using the IDW method.   Results and discussion The results indicated that the APHRODITE database had the highest accuracy, while PERSIANN-CDR had the lowest. Additionally, the runoff simulation results demonstrated that the VIC hydrological model performed well in simulating daily and monthly runoff. The KGE efficiency index for simulated daily runoff was 0.78 during the calibration period and 0.76 during the validation period. Evaluating the simulated runoff using climatic precipitation data revealed that PERSIANN-CDR satellite precipitation data was less accurate in detecting precipitation amounts but performed better in simulating runoff. The KGE for this data on a daily scale was 0.64 during the calibration period and 0.77 during the validation period. The KGE index for APHRODITE precipitation data based on ground stations ranked second, with values of 0.62 and 0.75 during the calibration and validation periods, respectively. ERA5-Land precipitation data, which is reanalyzed data, ranked third with a KGE index of 0.50 during the calibration period and 0.66 during the validation period.   Conclusions These findings indicate that climatic precipitation data can be effectively utilized in watershed management studies with low cost and appropriate accuracy, particularly in basins lacking a regular network or long-term data availability.

Introduction Hydrological regimes play a major role in changing the structure and function of ecological processes and river ecosystems. Significant changes in the hydrological regimes of river flow cause the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of river systems and the degradation of natural ecosystem services and threaten biodiversity. Trend analysis and change point detection are important topics in the analysis of hydrological time series. The study area in this research includes the upstream part of the Hablehroud river basin draining to the Bonekoh hydrometry station, located within the jurisdiction of the Tehran province. The Habaleroud river as the main drain of this watershed has recently encountered the pressures induced by human interventions and climate change, resulting in significant changes in its hydrological status. Materials and Methods In this research, using the sequential Mann-Kendall, Pettitt, Buishand Range, Buishand U, Standard Normal Homogeneity, and double mass curve tests, the significant change point in the annual discharge time series (1980–2017) of the Bonekoh hydrometry station at the outlet of the Hableroud watershed was detected. Then, using the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA), the alterations in the hydrological condition in the period after the change point (Altered flow regime) compared to the period before the change point (the natural flow regime) were analyzed using the daily observed discharge data of the Hableroud watershed. Results and Discussion According to the research results, in the mid-1990s, a statistically significant change point in the annual discharge time series of the Bonekoh hydrometry station occurred, and most of the hydrological indicators show a deterioration in the condition of the Habaleroud watershed flow regime. Whereas for most of the hydrological indicators, after the change point, the frequency of the low values category has increased and the frequencies of the middle and high values categories, have decreased. These reductions have not only occurred for high extreme values, but also for low extreme values. In addition, the mean monthly discharge for all months of the year and the base flow of the basin have decreased. Both the frequency and duration of low-flow pulses have increased. On the contrary, both the frequency and duration of the high-flow pulses have decreased. For this reason, the frequency and magnitude of high extreme events such as medium and large floods have decreased. The long-term trend analysis indicated that 25 out of the 33 IHA have experienced a statistically significant decreasing trend. Therefore, the mean annual discharge of the watershed at the Bonekoh station has declined from 8.43 m3/s during the pre-impact period to 5.43 m3/s during the post-impact period, which is equivalent to about 35 % decline in the watershed outflow. While the watershed’s mean annual precipitation shows a negligible long-term increasing trend. Therefore, it seems that human interventions across the watershed play a major role in the hydrologic regime alteration of the watershed. Conclusion In the Benkoh hydrometric station in the mid-1990s, the hydrological regime of the basin has changed significantly. Then, using special software, the hydrological change indicators and key environmental flow indicators were analyzed in the periods before and after the change point. Unfortunately, most of the hydrological indicators show a downward trend in the Habaleroud river flow. So that the average discharge has decreased in all months of the year. Base current values are reduced. Both the frequency and duration of minimum current pulses are increased. On the contrary, both the frequency and duration of maximum current pulses are reduced. For this reason, the frequency and magnitude of extreme events such as medium and large floods have decreased. The results of the analysis of the trend of several indicators of the environmental flow also indicate the regressive course in the ecohydrological conditions of the Hableroud watershed. So that the minimum monthly flows for all months of the year show a downward trend. On the one hand, the continuity and frequency of periods of water shortage has increased, and on the other hand, the frequency of high flow pulses has decreased. The consequence of these changes will be creating tension and threatening riverside plant and animal communities that live in the flood plains of rivers and provide many ecological services. On the other hand, with the destruction of these riverside communities, the hydraulic conditions of the floodplains have changed and the vulnerability of river ecosystems and infrastructure facilities around the river increases against possible floods and causes a lot of damage. With the continuation of the existing process of managing water resources of the basin, stakeholders and beneficiaries of the basin will face many challenges in the future. Due to the fact that the average annual rainfall of Hableroud basin does not show a decreasing trend, it seems that human interventions are one of the main factors affecting the hydrological changes of this basin. Therefore, it is suggested that the main focus of management policies and measures should be focused on the management and optimization of human interventions in Hableroud watershed. In other words, instead of focusing on the top-down management approach and (hard) structural engineering measures, the focus should be on the participatory management approach and (soft) management engineering measures, and the water and soil resources of this basin should be used optimally and in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, so that at the same time Reducing the conflicts between the beneficiaries and the stakeholders upstream and downstream of the watershed (social challenges and threats) which currently occurred on a larger scale between the two provinces of Tehran and Semnan, and also preventing these conflicts from occurring on a smaller scale between the smaller communities upstream and downstream in The extension of waterways and rivers in the basin prevented the occurrence and spread of diverse environmental challenges and threats and vulnerability to natural hazards such as sudden floods and droughts. Also, it is suggested that the future changes in discharge of the studied watershed should be predicted according to the results of climate change models and land use changes, and suitable solutions should be formulated and implemented in order to deal with or adapt to these changes.

Resilience indicators against environmental hazards are one of the basic criteria in planning and evaluating adaptation programs with the effects of natural hazards in rural areas. The present paper seeks to identify, formulate and validate the resilience indicators in rural areas to drought, so that planners and researchers can study these resiliency, drought and water crisis indicators, confirmed by the agreement of experts. The research method is descriptive-analytic, using questionnaires of experts and experts. In this research, different criteria and indices of theoretical literature were extracted and 35 questionnaires were subjected to arbitration by experts. In this research, 25 suitable indicators approved by executive experts and local experts have been introduced. The most suitable indicators and the most consensus can be indicators such as: livelihoods of the household, the growth trend or decrease in the natural resources of the village, the probability of immigration from the village, access to various agricultural water resources, the level of agricultural land (ownership), the state of insurance coverage and emergency services, agricultural development, household saving potential, and the prospects for non-farm business in the future. The results of this research can be the beginning for the development of a national model of rural resilience assessment indicators, the establishment of resilience index data banks and their quantitative reduction in order to achieve sustainable development and also reduce the effects of climate change and drought in rural areas of the country.

IntroductionClimate change and human interventions are the most important factors that in combination influence the hydrological response of a watershed system. In order to increase the level of their social and economic welfare, human beings have made serious and significant interventions in nature and directly caused several changes in its functions and processes, particularly the hydrological cycle. On the other hand, global climate change imposes several impacts on the natural hydrological cycle. Therefore, the separation of the effects of direct human intervention and climate change on the hydrological processes is of great importance for land use planning, water resources management, and socio-economic development policy-making. The hydrological cycle is one of the most important natural processes subjected to human interventions and climate change, whereas its various aspects and components get altered. One of these hydrological components is the river flow discharge, which is jointly affected by climate change and human interventions, and it will have dire consequences on different aspects of human life. Human activities indirectly (through the emission of greenhouse gases) and directly (through activities such as the construction of dams, water diversion structures, water consumption for agricultural activities, and land use change) affect the hydrological cycle and the natural regime of river flows. Materials and MethodsThe area studied in this research includes the upstream part of the Hablehroud watershed draining to the Bonekouh hydrometry station. The whole study area is located within the administrative boundaries of Tehran province. Hablehroud River, which is the main drain of the watershed, has been under pressure in recent years as a result of human activities and climate changes, and its hydrological status has altered significantly during past decades attracting the attention of watershed inhabitants and local authorities mostly blame the climate change as the main cause of the hydrologic alteration. The current research is conducted in order to determine the contribution of climate change and direct human interventions on the discharge decline of the Hableroud watershed. In this research, the hydrological sensitivity analysis approach based on the Budyko hypothesis was used in order to separate the effect of climate change and direct human interventions in reducing the discharge of Habaleroud River at the location of Simindasht and Delichai hydrometric stations. The annual time series of flow discharge during the period 1981 to 2017 was used. Two solution methods by Fu and Zhang have been used to solve the Budyko equation. Prior to the calculation of the contributions, the significant change point along the time series was detected by three tests of the Buishand Range, Standard Normal Homogeneity, and the sequential Mann-Kendall. Results and DiscussionDespite an infinitesimal variation, all the change point detection tests showed that a significant change point occurred in the middle of the 1990s for the annual discharge time series of the both hydrometry stations of Delichai and Simindasht. The contribution of climate change on discharge in the Simindasht and Delichai hydrometry stations was, respectively, calculated as less than one and 53 % according to Fu's method and -6 and 93 % according to Zhang's method. According to Fu's method, the contribution of human intervention in the discharge change of Simindasht and Delichai stations has, respectively, been calculated as -81 and -153 %, and according to Zhang's method as -94 and -193 %. The positive percentage values indicate the incremental effect on the flow discharge and the negative values indicate the subtractive or lessening effect. The results indicated that although the absolute and percentage values of the contributions calculated by both solution methods of the Budyko equation vary somehow, the direction (positive and negative effects) and the relative magnitude of contributions of the human interventions and climate change are similar for two solution methods of the Budyko equation. As can be noticed, at both the studied hydrometry stations, the effect of human intervention is much higher than the climate change effect. Another important point is that the effect of climate change on the flow discharge is subtractive only at the Simindasht hydrometry station according to Zhang’s method, and is incremental for other cases. In other words, climate change has resulted in increasing inflow discharge across the study area. Furthermore, the results of the study indicate that the effect of direct human interventions on the flow discharge is more intensive across the Delichai sub-watershed. ConclusionsAccording to the results of the study, it can be concluded that the main factor in the reduction of discharge in the Habaleroud River is direct human interventions and climate change has a very small contribution to it. Due to the fact that land use change is the main indicator of human interventions done in line with the main policies and strategies, developing proper policies and strategies to prevent inappropriate land use changes is necessary. Therefore, it is suggested that local policymakers and water resources managers develop and enact policies in order to manage the human activities influencing the natural water cycle. Furthermore, the results of this study can be used as a reference for the development, exploitation, and management of water resources in the future.

The proper combination of different land use patterns is one of the important factors in maintaining and sustaining water and soil resources, especially in basin areas. Considering economic, social and environmental criteria, this study aimed at investigating the optimal and sustainable land uses in Hablehroud Basin in Tehran and Semnan provinces of Iran. Thus, the SWAT as a model and the PROMETHEE and ELECTRE models as two samples of the multi-attribute decision making method were employed. Data for calculating the environmental criteria such as temperature, rain, humidity and evaporation were collected during 26 years and those for the economic and social criteria such as production cost, gross income and employment were collected in 2017. The study results indicated that the horticulture use of land in the south areas of the basin had the first rank and the pasture use of land in the north had the last rank both in terms of socio-economic and environmental criteria. Also, comparing the socio-economic criteria with the environmental ones, opposite ranks were observed for horticulture land use in the north and pasture land use in the south areas. Therefore, based on the results, some recommendations were made to improve the current land use situations as well as to develop the land use patterns in the studied basin.

Background and Objectives: Numerous benefits that people obtain from ecosystems are called ecosystem services. This services have a wide range and one of the most valuable of them is water yield. Water yield means long-term average of annual rivers flow and recharge of aquifers by precipitation. Due to different land use types and their potential in water yield, the evaluation of water yield at each land use type is important. The objective of this study is to assess and map the water yield at different land uses such as rangeland, agriculture, residential areas, bare ground and Juniperus ecological niche to decide which management decisions are appropriate for the area and how much water is provided by each land use. Materials and Methods: This study is done in Delichai watershed, one of the northern sub watersheds of Hableroud river basin that located in Tehran province. The water yield model is based on the Budyko curve that determines the amount of water running off each pixel of land as the total precipitation less the fraction of the water that undergoes evapo-transpiration. The required data include maps of land use and land cover, annual precipitation, average annual potential evapotranspiration, soil depth, plant available water content, boundary of watersheds and sub-watersheds as well as a biophysical table reflecting the biophysical attributes that entered in InVEST 3. 3. 2 tool to map and estimate water yield ecosystem service. Results: After entering the required data model as well as comparing the initial results obtained with the actual data in the outlet, the model was calibrated with hydrogeological parameters Z and the final results were obtained after calibration. According to the results, the amount of water runoff in whole Delichaee watershed is about 42 million cubic meters. The results of different land uses indicated that the maximum amount of runoff in land uses is in bare grounds with 2923. 992 cubic meter per hectare and then, Rangeland and agriculture land uses with 1264. 109 and 1062. 725 cubic meter per hectare runoff respectively have the highest values. Also, the lowest amount of runoff is 511. 287 cubic meter per hectare in Juniperus ecological niche. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that Although InVEST model needs available and relatively simple data but it has high efficiency and we can use it for mapping ecosystem services and decision making. Physiographic and climatic factors have a great impact on the amount of water in watershed and among these factors, elevation and precipitation are the most effective ones. However, the effect of vegetation on runoff should not be overlooked. Therefore, according to the importance of water provision and problems in water supply for people who live in the region, a relative estimation of runoff rate and the role of vegetation in reducing it can be made by using this model or other models.

Linkages in geographical spaces representing a region is not just a functional system which has been formed by various settlements. It rather takes its power from social, economic and physical networks and their interactions which means it is controlled by aforementioned networks. Therefore, there are always rural area and urban area with some relations or linkages. In this regard, relation mostly refers to a communication flow from an urban area to a rural area or vice versa while linkage refers to a double-sided communication flow between these two settlements. This study focuses on linkages and the networks with the characteristic of reciprocal. It is supposed to put an emphasis on just a settlement creates lots of problems while they can improve each other. However, it is believed rural-urban linkages can improve regional resiliency. The present study uses future studies methodology in order to develop earthquake resiliency scenarios based on rural-urban linkages using scenario wizard. Because of the extent of the study area, samples were selected based on the main aspects of research; earthquake and rural-urban linkages. Thus, by examining of faults zoning maps and historical trend of earthquakes in the study area and also, the most important factors in the field of rural– urban linkages such as second home tourism, immigration with a different purpose, northern and eastern regions were selected as samples. Therefore, Firouzkoh, Damavand, and Shemiranat were studied as three provinces. These samples were selected by chance from 7 districts (Taroud, Abarshive, LavasanKouckand, LavasoalBozorg, Hableroud, Dobolouk, RodbarGhasran) and 26 villages (Mosha, Mara, HesarBala, Hesar pain, Jaban, Khosravan, Sarbandan, Arou, Niknamdeh, kalan, Afje, KandOliya, Mahmod Abad, Hasarin, Amin Abad (HablehRoud), Dehgordan, Bahan, Najafdar, Osour, Tahneh, Garmabdar, Amin Abad (RoudbarGhasran), ShemshakBala, Sefid Dastan, Ahar, AmamehBala). Afterward, indicators of social, economic, institutional and physical resiliency were evaluated to develop earthquake resiliency scenarios. It must be noted that local leaders or rural municipality answered the questions. Future studies will allow us to plan according to the probable conditions and some evidence. Since we always have different evidence and probable conditions, there are a lot of scenarios for planning. To overcome this challenge, Scenario Wizard was used as a useful tool to reduce various scenarios derived from a 49*49 matrix with 13 factors. In total, there were 2097 scenarios that 40 ones are considered as logical scenarios. The selection was based on 1 consistency. After all, the scenarios were categorized into 3 groups. However, exploring rural-urban linkages have been proof for using them for regional challenges like earthquake resiliency. Although the mentioned linkages have an effect on improving resiliency, the current state showed an inconsistent state. This may be because of the lack of resiliency plans, lack of planning, training and proper notification, and failure in developing a public and private partnership, etc. The results show the advantage of consistent scenarios over inconsistent scenarios. In consequence, these linkages are useful tools for regional planning which can be used for challenging issues. On the other hand, the present condition has a completely different state. In the current condition, the inconsistent state takes advantage of the consistent state. These results prove the importance of regional planning and avoiding separating rural and urban areas in planning.