Assessment of climatic hazards impact on oak dieback in west of Iran

The purpose of this study was to investigate the oak forest dieback with respect to drought occurrence, soil moisture changes and dust occurrences factors in Ilam, Kermanshah, Lorestan and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces of Iran. The data used were field surveys collected through GPS, MODIS satellite imagery, GLDAS Soil Moisture, dust and precipitation data of the meteorological stations of the provinces during an 18-years period (2000-2017). The results of the study of greenness values of the forests in the study area showed that the first decline occurred in 2005 and repeated more severely with much wider spatial extent in 2008. Investigation of the relationship between drought events and its spatial and temporal variations with the changes in forests greenness of the study area showed that the reduction in precipitation amount is one of the main reasons for forest greenness reduction in the study area. The increased frequency of periods of rainfall shortage and drought duration, especially at 9 and 12-month time scales, showed a significant relationship between drought occurrences and forests greenness in the study area. The results indicated that by decreasing precipitation drought periods increased, soil moisture decreased, and dust storm occurrences increased. As a result, in most of the years, with decreasing soil moisture and increasing dust storms, the forests greenness of the study area has decreased and vis versa. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between soil moisture and forest greenness while an inverse relationship exists between dust and forest greenness.