Madineh Noroozi

Knowledge about the environmental status and trend of environmental quality has an important role for management and rehabilitation of the environment. Currently, the most important environmental problems in Isfahan province are air pollution, drought, uncontrolled industrial development, waste management, and increasing urbanization. To evaluate the environmental quality of Isfahan province, Multi Criteria Evaluation method was combiand with GIS. A set of criteria related to environmental quality was weighted and ranked by experts. The analytical structure was defined based on the important factors ( 44 criteria and subcriteria) influencing environmental quality. The weight of each factor was then determined using a pair-wise comparisons matrix filled by environmental experts. Environmental pollutio   including   air pollution, industrial pollution and waste management; environmental hazards including landslides and droughts; ecological status of the area including vegetation, percentage of protected areas, water resources and medicinal plants; and population density were among the most important criteria used in this study. GIS was used to create geographic data processing. Both AHP and ANP were used to rank the selected criteria. Population density and environmental pollution were identified as the most important factors influencing the environmental quality in the study area. All the selected criteria were converted to data layers and the processes of standardization and weighting were performed. To produce the map of Environmental Quality of the Isfahan province the layers were combined using weighted Linear Combination (WLC) method in the GIS environment. Southern and western parts of the province were recognized as most vulnerable area to natural disasters. Central and western parts of the province had a higher population density and were distinguished as the most polluted areas of the province. Counties located in the south of the province had more favourable conditions in terms of ecological status. Surface areas of 13%, 39%, 29% and 19% of the province were recognized as suitable, moderate, poor and very poor respectively. The spatial distribution of the environmental quality gradually decreased from the east to the west and from south to central part of the province with exception in a few areas. The eastern part of the province face with problems such as poor waste management and vulnerability to drought. It was concluded that the environmental quality of Isfahan Province was in the middle level, but was not uniform across the province, and highly intense human activities speeded up the degradation of the environments in recent years.