Investigation on the relationship between climate change and fire in the forests of Golestan Province

Fire is one of the most destructive factors in forests. This research was carried out to investigate the impact of climatic factors on fire in Golestan forests. Statistics of the area and the number of fires in Golestan forests in the two past decades (from 1990 to 2010) was provided by the Golestan Natural Resources Administration and the climatic data of the two past decades was provided by the Golestan Aerology Administration. Climatic data with the mean annual temperature mean annual precipitation and mean annual relative humidity in the four stations was obtained to get the mean climatic data of Golestan Province. Then the flowchart of the climatic data was drawn. After normal testing of data، Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to explore the relationship between climatic data and fires. Data analysis was performed using SPSS. Statistical analysis s of climatic data based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient showed that there was a significant relationship between number of occurred fires in Golestan forests and mean annual temperature with a 95% confidence level and also between the number of occurred fires in Golestan forests and mean annual relative humidity with a 99% confidence level; but there was no significant relationship between the number of occurred fires in Golestan forests and mean annual precipitation. On the other hand، there was a significant relationship between the area of occurred fires in Golestan forests and mean annual relative humidity with a 95% confidence level، but there was no significant relationship between the area of occurred fires in Golestan forests and mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation. The overall results showed that there was a direct relationship between fires of Golestan Province and the mean annual temperature، and there was an indirect relationship between fires in Golestan Province and mean annual relative humidity.