Identifying the Optimal Climatic Zones for the Restoration of Oak Forests in Kermanshah Province

Climate is one of the most important factors affecting the human environment and activities. Nowadays، the development of urban and industrial centers، and maintaining and increasing forest resources requires an increase in the information in different climatic zones. Although large-scale weather systems have the same influence on different parts of Kermanshah Province، this province experiences many various local climates too. So that these difference has caused the presence or absence of vegetation in different regions of the province. In order to identify climatic areas and adapted vegetations in each area، statistical methods such as factor analysis and clustering was used and 34 climate parameters were selected from 16 meteorological stations in this province. Then، (IDW) method was used to interpolate variables across the province and the data matrix size was obtained as 34 × 62. Factor analysis and an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis through ward linkage method was applied to it. The results show that there are 7 factors which control the climate of Kermanshah: temperature، wind and precipitation direction، moisture، thunderstorm، wind & dust، shower and cloud. Also clustering technique recognized seven sub climatic regions and the most extensive oak habitat was identified in the foothills regions and the main factor in this regard was the wind-precipitation direction.