Studying and Analyzing Relationship between Consumption of Medicinal Plants and Different Climates in Iran

Background and Study of interaction between human and nature that from the medical viewpoint, response of society to intensity of problems and from the natural resources viewpoint show necessity for presenting protective and supervisory programs for exploitation of natural habitats in these zones, Requires access to information and objective insight of cultural and social status of societies residing in different climatic zones of Iran which is obtained using social research. In order to acquire information and know about mechanism of medicinal plant consumption, the questionnaires enquired all family members of students in Isfahan University of Technology. Sample size was decided to be 682 families, and finally, 1047 questionnaires were collected. To study and compare views of statistical groups, one way ANOVA test was performed on data. Results showed that ratio of medicinal plants consumers was the highest in cold region and the lowest in moderate regions (75.6 and 66.5%). Also residents of cold regions majorly use herbal medicine as steamed medicinal plants and residents of warm region use them as distilled liquids. Comparison of sources of medicinal plants showed that nature in the cold region and herbalist’s shop in the warm region are the most important sources of medicinal plants. It seems cold climatic conditions will cause more problems for residents of these regions. High dependency on nature and excessive harvesting of medicinal plants habitats in cold climate as the most important source of medicinal plants are regarded as a serious threat for destruction of habitats and it is inevitable to pay attention to correct exploitation based on scientific methods, to farm medicinal plants and cultivate them to preserve genetic reserves and exploit them sustainably.