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.
Customers' creditworthiness standards are the key means employed by private commercial banks in assigning a suitable credit assessment for each customer. Accordingly, it had an instrumental role in indicating the degree of solvency of the potential customer before granting the required credit. The research problem reveals the nature of the relationship between the criteria of customer’s creditworthiness and banking liquidity. The most critical objectives of the study shed light on the role of using creditworthiness criteria as a tool for credit analysis of customers by banks that help reducing credit risks and thus increase banking liquidity. The questionnaire that was distributed to bank employees, the research sample, which w
... Show MoreBackground: Incorporation of chemical additives has long been a technique used to improve properties of the gypsum products. The purpose of this work was to study the effects of adding a combination of gum Arabic and calcium hydroxide to a type III dental stone and type IV improved die stone with different proportion. The effect on water/powder ratio, and surface hardness was determined. Material and method: Both material stone and die stone were blended with two proportion of additives so that each material was mixed twice but with different proportion of gum Arabic (0.1% and 0.2%) and calcium hydroxide (0.5 % and 0.3%). Data for hardness were subjected to two-way analysis of variance. Results: The results revealed that the chemical additi
... Show MoreThe current research focuses on the extent to which the strategic orientation(entrepreneurial orientation, customer orientation, technology orientation, learning orientation, and investment orientation) affects the learning organization (building common vision, systemic thinking, personal dominance, mental models, team learning)The first hypothesis to test the connection relation between research variables and The second hypothesis was to test the relationship between these variables. In order to ascertain the validity of the hypotheses, the research was based on a questionnaire questionnaire prepared according to a number of In addition to building a fifth sub-variable for the strategic orientation (investment orientation) based
... Show MoreOne of the most important phenomena facing the athlete is the anxiety of sports competition, as he faces many psychological problems during training and in competitions of psychological tension, fear and anxiety that accompany him sometimes, which leads to affecting his level, and sports competition anxiety is a special type of anxiety that occurs in the athlete It is related to the attitudes of sports competitions and that participation in sports competitions and the associated emotional experiences are among the important factors that motivate the practice of sports activity and try to advance and develop his sports level. It is assumed that when the individual begins to practice any activity, he aims to reach a level or degree of achie
... Show MoreAbstractIn the field of construction materials the glass reinforced mortar and Styrene Butadiene mortar are modern composite materials. This study experimentally investigated the effect of addition of randomly dispersed glass fibers and layered glass fibers on density and compressive strength of mortar with and without the presence of Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR). Mixtures of 1:2 cement/sand ratio and 0.5 water/cement ratio were prepared for making mortar. The glass fibers were added by two manners, layers and random with weight percentages of (0.54, 0.76, 1.1 and 1.42). The specimens were divided into two series: glass-fiber reinforced mortar without SBR and glass-fiber reinforced mortar with 7% SBR of mixture water. All s
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The current research aims to identify the impact of the (Landa) model on acquiring grammatical concepts among students of the College of Administration and Economics, University of Baghdad, and to achieve the research goal, the researcher has set the following hypotheses: There are no statistically significant differences at the level of significance (0.05) between the average degrees Students of the experimental group who studied the Arabic language according to the (Landa) model and the marks of the students of the control group who studied the same subject in the usual way in the post test, there are no statistically significant differences at the level of significance (0.05) in the average differences between the test scores before and
... Show MoreIn this study, two types of local plants were chosen, the first is the plant golden pothos Epipremnum aureum and the second is the Iraqi Sheikh's chin plant Tribulus terrestris L, for the purpose of making a comparison between them in terms of their possession of chemical groups with antioxidant activity in order to use them as a natural alternative to using antioxidants Industrial that cause negative effects on human health, the samples were prepared using the method of water and alcohol extraction (ethanol 70%) for both plants. It revealed the presence of a number of chemical groups (tannins, carbohydrates, phenols, flavonoids, alkaloids) for both plants, the aqueous and alcoholic extracts. Coumarins are only found in the sheikh's chin pl
... Show MoreBackground: During acrylic resin processing, the mold must be separated from the surface of the gypsum to prevent liquid resin from penetrating into the gypsum, and water from the gypsum seeping into the acrylic resin. For many years, tin foil was the most acceptable separating medium, and because it's difficult to apply, a tin-foil substitute is used. In this study, olive oil is used as an alternative to tin foil separating medium for first time, and evaluating its effect as a separating medium on some mechanical properties such as (indentation hardness and transverse strength) of acrylic resins denture base comparing it with those processed using tin-foil and tin foil substitute such as (cold mold seal) separating medium. Materials and M
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