The Zoning of Lorestan Province’s forests decline risk using logistic regression model

Habitat destruction is the most important threat to species. Forests are one of the most important habitats for wildlife. According to the latest official statistics of Forests, Range and Watershed Management Organization, approximately 25% of Zagros forests declined between 2001 and 2014. Identifying and zoning forest areas susceptible to decline to take preventative measures can help protect these important habitats. Hence, we used logistic regression model along with forest areas with over 50% decline as dependent variable and 12 environmental factors including annual mean rainfall, annual mean temperature, annual mean relative humidity, annual mean evapotranspiration, aridity index, drought index, dust storm index, NDVI, percentage of slope, geographic aspect, distance to agricultural lands and distance to surface waters as independent variables to identify forest areas susceptible to decline. The performance of the model was satisfactory with ROC of 0.93 and Pseudo-R2 equal to 0.33. Results indicated that about 51.3% of Lorestan province’s forests are faced with the risk of decline, of which about 25.3% have low risk, 8.7% have medium risk, 8.8% have high risk and 8.5% have very high risk of decline. Climatic factors including aridity index, evapotranspiration, annual mean rainfall, drought index, relative humidity and annual mean temperature were respectively recognized as the most important factors affecting Lorestan province’s forests decline.