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Dust storms in arid and desert areas affect radiation budget, air quality, visibility, enzymatic activities, agricultural products and human health. Due to increased drought and land use changes in recent years, the frequency of dust storms occurrence in Iran has been increased. This study aims to identify dust source areas in the Sistan watershed (Iran-Afghanistan borders)-an important regional source for dust storms in southwestern Asia, using remote sensing (RS) and bivariate statistical models. Furthermore, this study determines the relative importance of factors controlling dust emissions using frequency ratio (FR) and weights of evidence (WOE) models and interpretability of predictive models using game theory. For this purpose, we identified 211 dust sources in the study area and generated a dust source distribution map-inventory map-by dust source potential index based on RS data. In addition, spatial maps of topographic factors affecting dust source areas including soil, lithology, slope, Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), geomorphology and land use were prepared. The performance of two models (WOE and FR) was evaluated using the area under curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic curve. The results showed that soil, geomorphology and slope exhibited the greatest influence in the dust source areas. The 55.3% (according to FR) and 62.6% (according to WOE) of the total area were classified as high and very high potential dust sources, while both models displayed acceptable accuracy with subsurface levels of 0.704 for FR and 0.751 for WOE, although they predict different fractions of dust potential classes. Based on Shapley additive explanations (SHAP), three factors, i.e., soil, slope and NDVI have the highest impact on the model's output. Overall, combination of statistic-based predictive models (or data mining models), RS and game theory techniques can provide accurate maps of dust source areas in arid and semi-arid regions, which can be helpful for mitigation of negative effects of dust storms.

Mass displacement of materials such as landslide is considered among problematic phenomena in Baqi Basin located at southern slopes of Binaloud, Iran; since, it destroys agricultural lands and pastures and also increases deposits at the basin exit. Therefore, it is necessary to identify areas which are sensitive to landslide and estimate the significant volume. In the present study, in order to estimate the volume of landslide, information about depth and area of slides was collected; then, considering regression assumptions, a power regression model was given which was compared with 17 suggested models in various regions in different countries. The results showed that values of estimated mass obtained from the suggested model were consistent with observed data (P value = 0.000 and R = 0.692) and some of the existing relations which implies on efficiency of the suggested model. Also, relations that were created in small-area landslides were more suitable rather than the ones created in large-area landslides for using in Baqi Basin. According to the suggested relation, average depth value of landslides was estimated 3.314 meters in Baqi Basin which was close to the observed value, 4.609 m.