Abstract:Understanding the impacts of land-use changes on hydrology at the watershed scale can facilitate development of sustainable water resource strategies. This paper investigates the hydrological effects of land-use change in Zanjanrood basin, Iran. The water balance was simulated using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (AVSWAT2000). Model calibration and uncertainty analysis were performed with sequential uncertainty fitting (SUFI-2). Simulation results from January 1998 to December 2002 were used for parameter calibration, and then the model was validated for the period of January 2003 to December 2004. The predicted monthly streamflow matched the observed values: during calibration the correlation coefficient was 0Ð86 and the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient 0Ð79, compared with 0Ð80 and 0Ð79, respectively, during validation. The model was used to simulate the main components of the hydrological cycle, in order to study the effects of land-use changes in 1967, 1994 and 2007. The study reveals that during 1967 a 34Ð5% decrease of grassland with concurrent increases of shrubland (13Ð9%), rain-fed agriculture (12Ð1%), bare ground (5Ð5%) irrigated agriculture (2Ð2%), and urban area (0Ð7%) led to a 33% increase in the amount of surface runoff and a 22% decrease in the groundwater recharge. Furthermore, the area of sub-basins that was influenced by high runoff (14-28 mm) increased. The results indicate that the hydrological response to overgrazing and the replacing of rangelands (grassland and shrubland) with rain-fed agriculture and bare ground (badlands) is nonlinear and exhibits a threshold effect. The runoff rises dramatically when more than 60% of the rangeland is removed. For groundwater this threshold lies at an 80% decrease in rangeland.

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''Environmental issues'' along with raising awareness of people about the value of ecological systems and the growth of environmentalism have affected businesses systems and models by introducing new concepts and models for business such as sustainable business model. European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model provides a clear path for a company to follow in order to achieve its planned results which can be called sustainable business. The purpose of this study is to explore whether the mentioned model is suitable for the businesses that are based on cleaner production and sustainable business models. The method used in this study is an explorative one based on the literature review and exploration of the adaptability of EFQM Excellence Model (2013), including its fundamental concepts and its criteria, to eight archetypes of sustainable business. The results showed that out of eight fundamental concepts of this model, four are aligned with sustainable business model and four need redefining. Moreover, it was found that environmentalism should be added to the five enablers of the model, and results criteria of it needed to be restructured and redefined. In conclusion, it was shown that despite adoptability of the fundamental concepts of EFQM Excellence Model, there were some lacking criteria for adapting them to sustainable business model. Having this in mind, a modified type of model with the new defined criteria was proposed in this study.

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