Lut Desert Research Articles

The United States, Iran and the Continuing Salience of Geography

With recent US political and strategic goals unmet after ineffective diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions, some commentators and foreign policy experts have begun urging American strategists to employ military force to effect change in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. Presumably inspired by American success in establishing a US-friendly regime in neighbouring Iraq, such commentators suggest that a similar strategy of overwhelming military force could overcome the existing military and political structure of Iran and establish a pro-Western regime in its place. Such notions, however, rely on ignorance of one of the most basic elements of Iran: her geography. This ignorance, in turn, renders all such notions of military invasion not only unimaginable in theory but impossible in practice.The current paper begins with a short precis of the regime change via invasion rhetoric in the United States with particular focus on the recurring references to US air power despite its lack of historical utility in effecting regime change without associated ground forces. Then, drawing on a broad geopolitical literature from Mackinder in 1904 through to Gray and Friedman in the present, this paper explains how Iran’s geography, while not offering protection from air strikes, does render it largely protected from enemy invasion and occupation. With specific reference to the geographical barriers that are the Zagros and Alborz Mountains and the inhospitable Kavir and Lut Deserts, this paper demonstrates that attempts by enemies of Iran to force regime change through the use of air power alone or a combination of air and land military elements are inevitably bound to fail. In concluding the paper, it is suggested that this inescapable geopolitical reality should encourage US policymakers to consider carefully their positions on Iran and seek non-military means by which to engage with one of Asia’s historical and strategic nations.

Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal stratification in Iran: relationship between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula

Modern day Iran is strategically located in the tri-continental corridor uniting Africa, Europe and Asia. Several ethnic groups belonging to distinct religions, speaking different languages and claiming divergent ancestries inhabit the region, generating a potentially diverse genetic reservoir. In addition, past pre-historical and historical events such as the out-of-Africa migrations, the Neolithic expansion from the Fertile Crescent, the Indo-Aryan treks from the Central Asian steppes, the westward Mongol expansions and the Muslim invasions may have chiseled their genetic fingerprints within the genealogical substrata of the Persians. On the other hand, the Iranian perimeter is bounded by the Zagros and Albrez mountain ranges, and the Dasht-e Kavir and Dash-e Lut deserts, which may have restricted gene flow from neighboring regions. By utilizing high-resolution mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers and reanalyzing our previously published Y-chromosomal data, we have found a previously unexplored, genetic connection between Iranian populations and the Arabian Peninsula, likely the result of both ancient and recent gene flow. Furthermore, the regional distribution of mtDNA haplogroups J, I, U2 and U7 also provides evidence of barriers to gene flow posed by the two major Iranian deserts and the Zagros mountain range.

DEM-based analysis of morphometric features in humid and hyper-arid environments using artificial neural network

This paper presents a robust approach using artificial neural networks in the form of a Self Organizing Map (SOM) as a semi-automatic method for analysis and identification of morphometric features in two completely different environments, the Man and Biosphere Reserve “Eastern Carpathians” (Central Europe) in a complex mountainous humid area and Yardangs in Lut Desert, Iran, a hyper arid region characterized by homogeneous repetition of wind-eroded landforms. The NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) has provided Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for over 80% of the land surface. Version 3.0 SRTM data provided by the CGIAR-CSI GeoPortal are the result of substantial editing effort on the SRTM DEM produced by NASA. Easy availability of SRTM 3 arc second data promoted great advances in morphometric studies and numerical description of terrain surface features as shown by many literature references. The goal of this study was to develop a new semi-automatic DEM-based method for geo-morphometric feature recognition and to explore the potential and limitation of SRTM 90 meter data in such studies. The 3 arc seconds data were re-projected to a 90 m UTM grid. Bivariate quadratic surfaces with moving window size of 5×5 were fitted to this DEM. The first derivative, slope steepness and the second derivatives minimum curvature, maximum curvature and crosssectional curvature were calculated as geo-morphometric parameters and were used as input to the SOMs. Different learning parameter setting, e.g. initial radius, final radius, number of iterations, and the effect of the random initial weights on average quantization error were investigated. A SOM with a low average quantization error was used for further analysis. Feature space analysis, morphometric signatures, three-dimensional inspection and auxiliary data facilitated the assignment of semantic meaning to the output classes in terms of geo-morphometric features. Results are provided in a geographic information system as thematic maps of landform entities based on form and slope. Geo-morphometric features are scale-dependent and the resolution of the DEM limits the information, which can be derived. The results demonstrate that a SOM is an efficient scalable tool for analyzing geo-morphometric features as meaningful landforms under diverse environmental conditions. This method provides additional information for geomorphologic and landscape analysis even in inaccessible regions and uses the full potential of morphometric characteristics.

Late Cenozoic volcanism and rates of active faulting in eastern Iran

We present new 40Ar/39Ar ages of samples of volcanic rock exposed along the remote margins of the Dasht-e Lut desert in eastern Iran. Close spatial relationships between the volcanic rocks and the trace of active strike-slip faults allow us to determine the slip rates of two major faults, averaged since eruption of the volcanics. Our study shows that the Nayband fault at the western margin of the Dasht-e Lut has a slip rate of 223C1.4 � 0.5 mm yr22121 averaged over 2.25 Ma. The East Neh fault, one of several active strike-slip faults within the Sistan Suture Zone at the eastern margin of the Dasht-e Lut, has a minimum slip rate of 223C1.2 mm yr22121 averaged over 223C1.7 Ma. The rates of slip on major active faults in eastern Iran are largely unknown, and the slip rates our data provide, though limited, are a significant increase on what is known of the faulting within this remote and relatively inaccessible desert region. We also present analyses of the major and trace element concentrations within the volcanic rocks. The chemistry of the volcanic rocks is typical of intracontinental melts with an overall signature similar to that of ocean island basalts. Inversion of rare earth element distributions suggests some melting has occurred at depths of 223C80 km, indicating the presence of a relatively thin lithosphere beneath eastern Iran, in agreement with recently published maps of lithospheric thickness derived from shear wave velocities.

Application of Self Organizing Map and SRTM data to characterize yardangs in the Lut desert, Iran

Yardangs, an exclusive landform due to intensive wind erosion, cover a large area in the hyper-arid Lut desert of Iran. This paper presents a new approach using Self Organizing Map (SOM) as unsupervised algorithm of artificial neural networks for analysis and characterization of yardangs. Nowadays, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) with 3 arc sec data (approximately 90 m resolution) and nearly world wide coverage provides uniform good quality data. The SRTM 3 arc sec data were re-projected to a 90 m UTM grid. Bivariate quadratic surfaces with moving window size of 5 × 5 were fitted to this DEM. The first derivative, slope steepness and the second derivatives minimum, maximum curvature and cross-sectional curvatures were calculated as geomorphometric parameters used as input to the SOMs. 42 SOMs with different learning parameter settings, e.g. initial and final radius, number of iterations, and the effect of random initial weights on average quantization error were investigated. A SOM with a low average quantization error (0.1040) was used for further analysis. Feature space analysis, morphometric signatures, three-dimensional inspection, auxiliary data like Landsat ETM+ and high resolution satellite imagery from QuickBird facilitated the assignment of semantic meaning to the output classes in terms of geomorphometric features. Results are provided in a geographic information system as thematic maps of landform entities based on form and slope, e.g. yardangs (ridge), corridors (valley) or planar areas. The results showed that all yardangs and corridors were clearly recognized and classified by this method when their width was larger than the DEM resolution but became unrecognizable if their width is much smaller than the grid resolution. The identified yardangs and corridors are aligned NNW–SSE parallel to the prevailing direction of the strong local 120 days wind and cover about 31% and 42% of the study area respectively. The results demonstrate that SOM is a very efficient tool for analyzing aeolian landforms in hyper-arid environments that provides very useful information for terrain feature analysis in remote regions.

An estimation of the temperature of Lut desert using MODIS sensor data

Temperature is considered as the basic element of climate and also the environmental limiting factor in Lut Desert. In this research, in order to identify the temperature of Lut Desert located in east of central Iran, using remote sensing data, six series of MODIS sensor images related to June 24 th & December 23 rd 2002, and also January 22 nd , March 22 nd , June 22 nd & September 24 th 2003 were employed. The temperature rates have been estimated by using band numbers 31 and 32 with locative separation power of 1000 meters and considering the Sebal algorithm. According to the results of temperature evaluation, the mean for land surface temperature in Lut Desert within the mentioned images at 6 o clock Grinwich mean time have been; 49.6, 18.2, 22.0, 36.4,55.7 and 54.2 C, respectively. Setting relation between calculated surface temperatures and recorded temperatures by meteorology stations indicated a meaningful correlation at 0.001 level. The rate of calculated determinant coefficients has been ranging from 0.91 to 0.72 per hour. Hence, the linier algorithms within surface soil temperatures of the six studied images and the recorded temperatures through meteorology stations were determined. According to these algorithms, the highest calculated air temperature in the area with respect to images was 49.7 C (at 12:00) in June 22 nd 2003 and the lowest 11.5 C (at 03:00) Jan 22 nd 2003. The results of this survey indicate that using MODIS sensor images seems to be suitable for

A study of the relationship among temperatures of surface features and its application in remote sensing study of Lut desert

Physical characteristics of different features in desert is a reflection of severe thermal and climatic conditions. In this paper, diurnal surface temperature patterns of important surface features in Lut Desert were studied and the relationship among different surfaces analyzed. Diurnal trend in surface temperature of surface types, marl, dark sand, light sand, salt-affected soil, soul at 10 cm depth, as well as dry and wet air temperature within 15 days were recorded in 2 hour intervals in the margin of Lut yardangs while correlations among these surface features and its significance level were investigated. The knowledge of diurnal temperature pattern and calculation of correlation among features can lead us to the understanding of the behavioral pattern and the trend of surfaces. The knowledge of behavioral pattern of correlation coefficients during different hours of the day provides the researchers the ability to produce optimal models of thermal characteristics and to predict them. Additionally, thermal data of different sensor systems along with their capability in the study of surface features in Lut Desert was evaluated. The results of thermal and inter-feature correlation analysis reveal a similar trend (at 8 AM and 4 PM) among various feature types. The correlation coefficient of different surfaces shows the highest value at 6 AM and the lowest at 8 PM. The correlation coefficient between sand and marl with grey sand and soil shows a non-linear trend at pre-noon hours while a linear and similar trend in the afternoon. Generally speaking, the correlation coefficient between surfaces at pre-noon hours as compared to afternoon hours is completely non-linear and does not reveal any specific pattern. It seems that TIR data acquired at 10 AM is the best choice in the study of Lut Desert and hence ETM + and TM data can be used.

Mega‐Yardangs: A Global Analysis

AbstractYardangs, analogues of which occur on Mars and possibly on Venus, are wind moulded landforms that develop in the world's drylands. Mega‐yardangs (wind‐abraded, ridge, and swale features of regional extent) are easily identified on satellite images and these have been employed to map their global distribution. Areas where they are present include Central Asia, the Lut Desert of Iran, northern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Libyan Desert in Egypt, the central Sahara, the Namib Desert, the high Andes and the Peruvian Desert. These features develop in a wide range of rock types, including sandstones, ignimbrites, limestones and basement rocks, occur in hyper‐arid areas, form where winds tend to be unimodal in direction, are best developed in areas of sand transport rather than sand accumulation, and occur in plains rather than in mountainous areas.

Seismotectonic, rupture process, and earthquake-hazard aspects of the 2003 December 26 Bam, Iran, earthquake

The catastrophic 2003 Mw 6.6 Bam earthquake in southern Iran attracted much attention, and has been studied with an abundance of observations from synthetic aperture radar, teleseismic seismology, aftershock studies, strong ground motion, geomorphology, remote sensing and surface field work. Many reports have focused on the details of one or other data type, producing interpretations that either conflict with other data or leave questions unanswered. This paper is an attempt to look at all the available data types together, to produce a coherent picture of the coseismic faulting in 2003 and to examine its consequences for active tectonics and continuing seismic hazard in the region. We conclude that more than 80 per cent of the moment release in the main shock occurred on a near-vertical right-lateral strike-slip fault extending from the city of Bam southwards for about 15 km, with slip of up to 2 m but mostly restricted to the depth range 2–7 km. Analysis of the strong ground motion record at Bam is consistent with this view, and indicates that the extreme damage in the city can be attributed, at least in part, to the enhancement of ground motion in Bam because of its position at the end of the northward-propagating rupture. Little of the slip in the main shock reached the Earth's surface and, more importantly, aftershocks reveal that ∼12 km vertical extent of a deeper part of the fault system remained unruptured beneath the coseismic rupture plane, at depths of 8–20 km. This may represent a substantial remaining seismic hazard to the reconstructed city of Bam. We believe that some oblique-reverse slip (up to 2 m, and less than 20 per cent of the released seismic moment) occurred at a restricted depth of 5–7 km on a blind west-dipping fault that projects to the surface at the Bam-Baravat escarpment, an asymmetric anticline ridge that is the most prominent geomorphological feature in the area. This fault did not rupture significantly at shallow levels in 2003, and it may also represent a continuing seismic hazard. Widespread distributed surface ruptures north of the city are apparently unrelated to substantial slip at depth, and may be the result of enhanced ground motion related to northward propagation of the rupture. The faulting at Bam may be in the early stages of a spatial separation (‘partitioning’) between the reverse and strike-slip components of an oblique convergence across the zone. Such a separation is common on the continents, though in this case the slip vectors between the two faults differ only by ∼20° as a substantial strike-slip component remains on the oblique-reverse fault. The Bam earthquake is one in a series of large earthquakes involving faulting along the western edge of the Lut desert. In addition to the unruptured parts of the faults near Bam itself, continuing and substantial hazard is represented by unruptured neighbouring faults, particularly blind thrusts along the Jebel Barez mountains to the south and strike-slip faulting at Sarvestan to the west.

DIURNAL BEHAVIOR OF LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE IN LUT DESERT

analyses and thermal infrared channels 4 and 5 NOAA- AVHRR images. This research was carried out in Lut Desert located in center of sub-tropical divergence dominant in' Iranian plateau. The physical and thermal properties of the various desert surfaces have been determined using correlation relationships between the desert variables including: dark sand, normal sand, marl, saline soil, soil depth (10 cm), wet and dry bulb temperature in daytimes with the interval of two hours from 6 AM to 20 P.M within 15 days. The result shows that thermal conductivity, thermal capacity, physico-chemical properties of the studied materials and other thermal properties, are the most important factors affecting correlation coefficients. The highest correlation obtained around the sunrise (6 AM) and especially before and after the sunset (18, 20 P.M). Minimum correlations were obtained around the noon at soil depth and the best fitted models are linear for light sand and marl in 18, 20 P.M and non-linear for soil depth and marl in 18 P.M. Therefore it is generally concluded that the study of diurnal behavior of land surface temperatures might be useful for thermal image interpretation.

Numerical Simulation of a Low-Level Jet over Complex Terrain in Southern Iran

The Lut Desert of Iran is an elongated valley oriented north-northwest to south-southeast. The valley descends southward to the Jaz Murian dry lake through a pass. The Navy’s Coupled Ocean‐Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System is used to study a northerly low-level jet in the valley and across the dry lake. The dynamics of the jet are investigated with force balance and Froude numbers to determine the contribution of various mechanisms to the jet formation and maintenance. The jet is initiated as a channeled gap flow in the convergent topography of the Lut valley by the valley-parallel pressure gradients generated by the large-scale processes and by the presence of cold air over the valley’s sloping terrain. The pressure gradient is mainly counteracted by the frictional force. The imbalance between them controls the intensity and persistence of the jet in the valley. Farther south, the jet evolves into a downslope flow resembling a hydraulic jump on the steep slope of the dry lake. A transition of subcritical situation to supercritical faster flow is found at the mountain crest between the Lut valley and dry lake. The depth of stably stratified cold layer, the static stability of upstream inversion, and magnitude of upstream winds all determine the jet configuration over the dry lake. The lee troughing over the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, as the large-scale inland flow crosses the coastal mountains, supports this low-level jet through the increased along-jet pressure gradient. The jet is also influenced by diurnal forcing, being strong at night and weak during daytime.

Organization for Regional Economic Development Projects: A Middle East Experience

A SERIES of eighty-nine steel towers provid~L~ing modern microwave radio now stalk LI-through Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Stretching 3000 miles across such natural obstacles as the mountains of Eastern Turkey, the Lut Desert of Southeastern Iran, and the mountains of the Baluchistan area, the new axis from Ankara near the Mediterranean to Tehran and thence to Karachi on the Arabian Sea represents a very considerable engineering accomplishment. Yet, more significant for the completion of this communications tie were solutions to critical organizational and administrative issues. Achieving effective coordination of planning and execution in a complex technical enterprise enmeshed in the separate governmental structures of three sovereign Middle Eastern countries required both engineering and organizational decisions. Engineering decisions had to be made which would embrace new technologies consistently from end to end of the Ankara to Karachi axis while still reflecting the fact of the intimate intertwining of new facilities with existing, and less modern, internal telephone and telegraph systems in each participating country. Existing systems had to be interconnected and served. Decisions about the axis could not be made independently. Organizational issues included the need for a strong coordinating influence on the internal and external financing plans and on the work performance of the four participating countries-a coordinating influence that could be maintained over a period of years. Such were the major elements of a signifi> Natural, political, and organizational obstaclesall had to be overcome in the planning and construction of the Turkey-Iran-Pakistan Telecommunications Project built under the aegis of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). From the macro issue of the appropriate role for an international agency, to the micro, but still vital pressures of U.S. private firms, the author treats issues of technical assistance and comparative administration in the 1956-1964 course of events which have today created a physically visible symbol of practical regional cooperation.