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 se

This field experiment, was conducted to investigate a comparison of two methods for harvesting potatoes: mechanical and handy when using moldboard and chisel plow for primary tillage and three different distances for planting tubers in the rows 15, 25, and 35 cm in silt clay loam soil south of Baghdad. The factorial experiment followed a randomized complete block design with three replications using L.S.D. 5 % and 1 %. Mechanical harvest recorded the best valid potato tubers at 88.78 %, marketable yield of 31.74 ton. ha-1, efficiency lifted 95.68 %, tubers damage index 28.41, speeding up the harvesting process and reducing time and effort. Handy harvest gave the least damage to potato tubers, 6.02 %, and unlifted potato tubers, 4.32 %. Howe

The map of permeability distribution in the reservoirs is considered one of the most essential steps of the geologic model building due to its governing the fluid flow through the reservoir which makes it the most influential parameter on the history matching than other parameters. For that, it is the most petrophysical properties that are tuned during the history matching. Unfortunately, the prediction of the relationship between static petrophysics (porosity) and dynamic petrophysics (permeability) from conventional wells logs has a sophisticated problem to solve by conventional statistical methods for heterogeneous formations. For that, this paper examines the ability and performance of the artificial intelligence method in perme

The Aaliji Formation in wells (BH.52, BH.90, BH.138, and BH.188) in Bai Hassan Oil Field in Low Folded Zone northern Iraq has been studied to recognize the palaeoenvironment and sequence stratigraphic development. The formation is bounded unconformably with the underlain Shiranish Formation and the overlain Jaddala Formation. The microfacies analysis and the nature of accumulation of both planktonic and benthonic foraminifera indicate the two microfacies associations; where the first one represents deep shelf environment, which is responsible for the deposition of the Planktonic Foraminiferal Lime Wackestone Microfacies and Planktonic Foraminiferal Lime Packstone Microfacies, while the second association represents the deep-sea environme

The emergence of oil fields and subsequent changes in adjacent land use are known to affect settlements and communities. Everywhere the industry emerges, there is little understanding about the impact of oil fields on land use in the surrounding areas. The oil industry in Iraq is one of the most important industries and is almost the main industry in the Iraqi economic sector, and it is very clear that this industry is spread over large areas, and at the same time adjoins with population communities linked to it developmentally.

The rapid development and expansion of oil extraction activities in various regions has led to many challenges related to land-use planning and management. Here, the problem of research  arises on th

This research addresses the employment of public relations for foreign oil corporate social responsibility programs operating in Iraq. It is a study of the programmes of six petroleum companies operating in Basra Governorate, which were selected for research as the highest production of Iraqi oil, as well as its enjoyment of strategic oil stores in Iraq.It contains the largest oil fields operatedby major international companies. This study aims at a number of objectives, notably the following:1)Recognize the most prominent corporate social responsibility projects and initiatives the companies have introduced to the local public.2)Investigate the extent to which the Iraqi publ

This paper presents a comparative study between different oil production enhancement scenarios in the Saadi tight oil reservoir located in the Halfaya Iraqi oil field. The reservoir exhibits poor petrophysical characteristics, including medium pore size, low permeability (reaching zero in some areas), and high porosity of up to 25%. Previous stimulation techniques such as acid fracturing and matrix acidizing have yielded low oil production in this reservoir. Therefore, the feasibility of hydraulic fracturing stimulation and/or horizontal well drilling scenarios was assessed to increase the production rate. While horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can improve well performance, they come with high costs, often accounting for up t

The study includes the epipelic algae in Hemren reservoir, for the period between Januarys to October 2000 .The samples were collected from three selected sites at north, middle and south of reservoir. A total of 96 taxa of epipelic algae were identified. The diatoms were the dominated by 82 taxa represented 85.4% of the total identified species, followed by blue-green algae (cyanophyta) of 6.3 taxa (6%), and then green algae (chlorophyta) of 5.2 taxa (5%). One species was recorded for each crysophyta, euglenophyta and pyrrophyta. The seasonal variation for the cell density showed two peaks during spring and autumn seasons. Few species were dominated during the most studied period such as Achnanthes minutissima, Navicula cryptocephala

Some major pollutants of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) those discharged as water produced (WP) from the AlAhdab oil field (AOF) in the ponds close to it may leak to the water resources around and eventually reaches the marshes which will affect its ecosystem. Thus, this work aims to track the availability of PAH in the water resources and the Main Outfall Drain (MOD) nearby. The determination of PAH was evaluated using “High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)”. The mean concentration of sixteen PAH in the produced water within the field was relatively high (0.01 to 10.89 g/ml) with standard deviations of (0.10.9). While, PAH outside the field were gradually diminishes down to (0.01-0.039) x10-2 g/ml which exceeds th

The fish assemblage in the East Hammar marsh was studied during December 2009 to May 2010. The fish fauna of the marsh consisted of 17 native, 23 marine (49%) and seven alien species. The dominant species were Liza abu (14.6%), Carassius auratus (13.4%) and Thryssa mystax (11.2%). The resident species formed 44.7%, occasional species 36.1% and seasonal species 19.2% of the total number of fish species. Fish species diversity index ranged from 1.28 to 2.61, richness from 1.98 to 4.50 and evenness from 0.45 to 0.78. Salinity ranged from 1.45 to 7.74‰. The increase in the proportion of marine species (49%) in the fish assemblage due to marine waters progress from Arabian Gulf had an impact on the values of ecological indices and the