Ecosystems provide humans with services that include benefits from food, fresh water, climate regulation, and socio-economic assets. The Mesopotamian marshlands are among the largest wetlands in the Middle East and they provide various benefits. However, ecosystem services of the Marshlands are consistently undervalued in national economic analysis and decision making. This study focusses on the Central Marshes, the first National Park in Iraq, and is the first attempt at valuing a series of ecosystem services from a valuable natural ecosystem in Iraq. We adopted the Toolkit for Ecosystem Services Site-Based Assessment (TESSA) for the determination of biophysical and economic values of services at the site level. Data on key ecosystem services (as determined by 30 interviews with residents of the Marshes) included the trading of fish, harvested plants, water buffalo milk, and fodder were collected across six months in 2014. We valued the ecosystem services within the CM (40,000 ha) over a 6-month period to have a total value of 860,078.23 USD. This estimated total value was the sum of 86,637.25 USD from harvested plants, 551,334.80 USD from trading fish, 167, 303.70 USD from trading water buffalo milk, and 54,804.00 USD from trading fodder. The average income per individual in Iraq in 2014 was 6720 USD (World Bank data - https://data.worldbank.org/country/iraq): thus, the CM provided an average salary for 256 people. Our results provided greater understanding of the ecosystem services contributed by the Central Marshes and has highlighted the crucial role of nature in supporting sustainable well-being for humans living in the area. In addition, the results can be used to enhance local policy, to aid management plans of the National park, and to estimate lost and damage that could result from impact of climate change on the area.
This study is concerned with the recent changes that occurred in the last three years (2017-2019) in the marshes region in southern Iraq as a result of the changes in the global climate, the study included all the water bodies in the five governorates that are located in the southern regions of Iraq (Wasit, Maysan, Dhi-Qar, Qadisiyah and Basrah), which represent the marshes lands in Iraq. Scenes of the Landsat 8 satellite are used to create a mosaic to cover the five governorates within a time window with the slightest difference between the date of the scene capture, not to exceed 8 days. The results of calculating the changes in water areas were obtained using the classifier support vector machine, where high accuracy ratios were recorded
... Show MoreBaqubah city has grown extremely rapidly. The rate of growth exceeds the growth of services that must grow side by side with the growth of population. There are natural features that affect the growth of Baqubah city such as Dieyala river, Alssariya river, in addition to agricultural areas .All these natural features affect the growth of Baqubah city in the running form being seen . In this research the remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) techniques are used for monitoring urban expansion and forecasting the probable axes to the growth of the city, and found that the probability of Baqubah growth to east is preferred due to Baqubah growth to the east would never interfere with natural features. Also in this res
... Show MoreThe petrophysical analysis is very important to understand the factors controlling the reservoir quality and production wells. In the current study, the petrophysical evaluation was accomplished to hydrocarbon assessment based on well log data of four wells of Early Cretaceous carbonate reservoir Yamama Formation in Abu-Amood oil field in the southern part of Iraq. The available well logs such as sonic, density, neutron, gamma ray, SP, and resistivity logs for wells AAm-1, AAm-2, AAm-3, and AAm-5 were used to delineate the reservoir characteristics of the Yamama Formation. Lithologic and mineralogic studies were performed using porosity logs combination cross plots such as density vs. neutron cross plot and M-N mineralogy plot. Thes
... Show MoreTotal of 170 samples were collected from Al-Chibayish Marsh reality in Dhi-Qar governorate southern of Iraq to study the epidemology of viral hepatitis in these areas and to detect the type of hepatitis viruses which include A ,B,C,D .The percentage of hepatitis A was 1.17% and most of them below age of ?10 (66.6%) while infection with hepatitis B account 5.29% and includes all age groups. There was no detected cases of hepatitis C,D. The laboratory study showed that the incidence of hepatitis B higher in male (4.11%) compared to female ( 2.35%)
Were studied some bacteria evidence of pollution as well as the total number of live bacteria in the waters of the Diyala river and selected five stations within the 17 km final Diyala River before its mouth in the Tigris River was the first before the new bridge of the Diyala River about 4 km and the second after the mouth of the water purification plant Rustumiya suit inverselywith temperatures
This study analyzes how to make use of the resources in the marshlands of Iraq and how to utilize them, especially after the water returns to these areas and they are revitalized. We take an example of AL- Saheen Marsh and plan an ideal tourist resort there. This example can further expand to include other parts of the marshlands. The resort will utilize the local environment and tourist characteristics as it will have a feel and architectural resemblance to the houses and buildings that are currently built there. In addition the transportation methods will be the same as those used by the locals. Yet the resort will still posses all the facilities required by a modern tourist resort that includes all the services that will make
... Show MoreThe Mauddud Formation was one of the important and widespread Lower Cretaceous period formations in Iraq. It has been studied in three wells (EB. 55, EB. 58, and EB. 59) within the East Baghdad Oil Field, Baghdad, central Iraq. 280 thin sections were studied by microscope to determine fauna, the formation composed of limestone and dolomitized limestone in some parts which tends to be marl in some parts, forty species and genus of benthic foraminifera have been identified beside algae and other fossils, three biozones have been identified in the range which is: Orbitolina qatarica range zone (Late Albian), Orbitolina sefini range zone (Late Albian – Early Cenomanian) and Orbitolina concava range zone (Early Cenomanian), The age of
... Show MoreThe type of groundwater in the studied area is slightly brackish. In general, the dominant water type is calcium-sulfate. The reasons behind these different chemical groundwater types can be referred to the active ion exchange between the groundwater of the Dammam aquifer and Rus Formation. The groundwater of the Dammam unconfined aquifer is not suitable for human drinking in all the parameters properties. The groundwater class is fair in the Qasir Al-Ukhaider area, while the Shebcha area and Al-Salman area are poor class except the eastern part of Al-Salman area is very poor.