Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Saeid Ghasemi ¹
• Mohammad Nemati Varnosfaderany ¹
• Anooshe Kafash ²
• Fereshteh Kiani Nezhad ¹
• Fahime Fadaei Jazi ³
• Sepideh Salehi Mokari ¹
• Zahra Jaberalansar ⁴
• Sara Azadi ⁵
• Saeid Rezaei ⁶
• Seyed Reza Azadeh ⁷
• Hamidreza Keshavarz ⁸
• Rahim Amirikhah ⁹
• Seyed Sasan Babaee ¹⁰
• Mohammad Erfan Kaghazchi ¹
• Sima Khaleghian ¹¹
• Reza Peykanpour Fard ¹
• Sadat Hashemi Nasab ⁵
• Mousa Dehghani ¹
• Narges Mohammadzadeh ¹²
• Adel Shakibaee ¹³
• Ferial Farasat ¹
• Mehrdad Alranaee ¹
• Fakhrieh Mohseni ¹

¹ Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran.

² Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

³ Department of Urban Planning Geography, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran.

⁴ Department of Natural Resources Research, Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center of Isfahan Province, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization, Isfahan, Iran.

⁵ Department of Geography, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

⁶ Department of Industrial Engineering, Arak University, Arak, Iran.

⁷ Department of Urban Engineering, Faculty of Technical and Engineering Sciences, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran.

⁸ Department of Political Sociology, Faculty of Administrative Sciences and Economics, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

⁹ Department of Horticultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran.

¹⁰ Department of Geodesy, Faculty of Surveying Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

¹¹ Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Isfahan Art University, Isfahan, Iran.

¹² Department of Natural Geography, Faculty of Earth Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

¹³ Department of Agricultural Policy and Development Economics, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

Abstract

This study employed a descriptive-analytical approach to identify the most important environmental challenges and the factors affecting them in Isfahan Province.  Data were collected through a questionnaire encompassing 9 major environmental challenges and 102 influencing factors, with a sample size of 222 participants. The determination of key challenges and their influencing factors was conducted across three categories: public people, educational, and occupational categories, utilizing the Kruskal-Wallis test followed by the Dunn-Bonferroni post-hoc test. The comparison results, from the perspective of all volunteers, placed the major challenges of Isfahan province in 3 groups, the most important of which were in groups a and b, respectively, including the drying up of the Zayandehroud River and the Gavkhouni International Wetland and the challenge of air pollution (a), weak environmental governance (ab), and land subsidence (b). No significant differences were observed in the opinions of the three categories regarding the identification of these main challenges (alpha = 0.05). The analysis revealed that the factors contributing to the drying of the Zayandehroud River, the Gavkhouni International Wetland, and land subsidence were common in most cases. They included insufficient allocation of environmental flow for the Zayandehroud River and the Gavkhouni International Wetland, excessive extraction of groundwater resources, and water transfer projects originating from the Gavkhouni basin. The results of the comparison of factors affecting the air pollution challenge showed a significant difference (alpha = 0.05) between the concentration of large industries and the lack of supervision over the use of pollution emission reduction and control equipment with other factors. Regarding the challenge of weak environmental governance, the most influential factor was identified as the exclusion of environmental priorities from government investment agendas aimed at managing, preventing, mitigating, or resolving environmental problems.