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Indigenous knowledge on use values of Karvan district plants, Iran

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Abstract

Traditional and indigenous knowledge on plants usage is a valuable source of information from cultural and natural perspectives, reflecting society’s complicated and close relationship with the environment. Communities have a valuable source of traditional knowledge on the utilization of natural resources, and it is worth to be documented and preserved for current and future applications. We conducted this research to collect and identify plant species of Karvan District and document the traditional knowledge on their use and consumption values. Regarding the results, 150 plant species are used by local communities, more than 30 % of which are directly consumed as food, 24 % (37 species) are used as medicinal plants, and 16.3 % are applied for decoration purposes; 58.6 % of the species are consumed in the raw form, and the remaining is processed before consumption. Leaves (35 %), seeds (21 %) and flowers (21 %) are the most frequent parts of the plants that are used. High number of young emigrants to industrialized areas in seek of job opportunities is threatening this precious source of indigenous knowledge. Attempts to preserve this empirical source of information by encouraging trans-generational knowledge transmission would help to maintain it for future applications.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to appreciate Isfahan University of Technology for their support and cooperation and dedication of their laboratory to this research. Also we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the people of Karvan for their help regarding their historical knowledge and information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Arid and Mountainous Regions Reclamation, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Habib Yazdanshenas & Elham Shafeian

  2. Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources and Earth Sciences, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran

    Maliheh Nasiri

  3. Department of Natural Resources, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

    Seyed Alireza Mousavi

Authors
  1. Habib Yazdanshenas
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  2. Elham Shafeian
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  3. Maliheh Nasiri
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  4. Seyed Alireza Mousavi
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Correspondence to Habib Yazdanshenas.

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Yazdanshenas, H., Shafeian, E., Nasiri, M. et al. Indigenous knowledge on use values of Karvan district plants, Iran. Environ Dev Sustain 18, 1217–1238 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-015-9698-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-015-9698-y

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