The Effect of Climate Fluctuations on Vegetation Dynamics in West and Northwest of Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

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

2 University of Tehran

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

4 Department of Physical Geography (Geomorphology), Faculty of Geography University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Vegetation plays an essential role in the ecosystem that its change will alter the ecosystem. This research tried to study temperature and precipitation fluctuations on vegetation conditions in the west and northwest of Iran. For this purpose, the NDVI was determined for June from 2000 to 2016.based on the MOD13Q1 production of the MODIS satellite. Initially, using mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation of 49 stations in the study area, rainfall and temperature maps were prepared in ArcGIS 10.5 software each year and then categorized into five classes by the natural break method. The correlation coefficient was calculated using Pearson correlation between NDVI map with temperature and precipitation maps in the next step. Finally, the correlation was investigated in different temperature and precipitation classes. The results showed that the highest NDVI mean correlation with temperature and precipitation occurred in 8-12 °C with a value of 0.36 and 213-300 mm classes with a value of 0.38, respectively. According to this issue, the northern parts of the study area have a lower temperature, and precipitation responds to climate fluctuations more than other sites. Studying climate fluctuations is recommended for assessing better the temporal and spatial vegetation dynamics. Exploring the human activity's impacts on vegetation changes is proposed to realize vegetation's temporal and spatial dynamics to manage vegetation cover and prevent its degradation.

Keywords

References

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Desert Ecosystem Engineering
Volume 9, Issue 5 in English
January 2021
Pages 28-19

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