Conversion of life zone to ecologically less valuable land cover in Iran
Paper Details
Conversion of life zone to ecologically less valuable land cover in Iran
Abstract
The life zones of Iran were mapped using the Holdridge system based on biotemperature and precipitation maps of Iran. Conversion of each life zone to an ecologically less valuable land use/cover was determined based on comparing the life zones and the current land cover of Iran. Results showed that Iran contains 26 life zones. The most extensive life zone is subtropical desert life zone covering 21.9% of the area of the country. Periarid class is the largest humidity province (34.2 % of Iran) followed by arid class (24.8 % of Iran). According to the physiognomic types, most area of Iran (35%) is covered by desert life zone followed by scrub (30.4%), steppe (18.7%), forest (10.2%), woodland (5.6%) and tundra (0.14%) life zone. 87% of woodland, 64% of forest, 61% of steppe and 21% of scrub life zone were converted to less ecologically valuable land covers. Steppe life zone was the life zone with the largest area (37%) being converted to agricultural lands followed by forest (23%) and woodland (22%) life zone. The smallest area (14%) being converted to agricultural lands was the area with the potential of having scrub life zone. The conversion of forest life zone to agricultural lands and moderate rangelands, the conversion of steppe and scrub life zone to agricultural lands and that of woodland life zone to poor rangelands were the largest types of negative conversions. The Holdridge life zone system can be an efficient approach for comparing potential vegetation and actual vegetation.
Bailey RG, Hogg HC. 1983. A world ecoregions map for resource reporting Environ. Conservation 13, 195–202.
Bailey RG. 1980. Description of the ecoregions of the United States.
Box EO. 1981. Predicting physiognomic vegetation types with climate variables. Vegetatio 45(2), 127-139.
Chen L, Gong J, Fu B, Huang Z, Huang Y, Gui L. 2007. Effect of land use conversion on soil organic carbon sequestration in the loess hilly area, loess plateau of China. Ecological Research 22(4), 641-648.
Costanza R, d’Arge R, De Groot R, Farber S, Grasso M, Hannon B, van den Belt M. 1998. The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital Ecological economics 25(1), 3-15.
Daly C, Bachelet D, Lenihan JM, Neilson RP, Parton W, Ojima D. 2000. Dynamic simulation of tree-grass interactions for global change studies. Ecological Applications, 10(2), 449-469.
Emanuel WR, Shugart HH. Stevenson MP. 1985. Climatic change and the broad-scale distribution of terrestrial ecosystem complexes. Climatic change 7(1), 29-43.
Falcucci A, Maiorano L, Boitani L. 2007. Changes in land-use/land-cover patterns in Italy and their implications for biodiversity conservation. Landscape ecology 22(4), 617-631.
García-Oliva F, Casar I, Morales P, and Maass JM, 1994. Forest-to-pasture conversion influences on soil organic carbon dynamics in a tropical deciduous forest. Oecologia 99(3-4), 392-396.
Hansen AJ, Knight RL, Marzluff J, Powell S, Brown K, Gude PH, Jones K. 2005. Effect of exurban development on biodiversity: patterns, mechanisms, and research needs. Ecological Applications 15, 1893–1905.
Heyer WR. 1967. A herpetofaunal study of an ecological transect through the Cordillera de Tilarán, Costa Rica. Copeia 2, 259-271.
Holdridge LR. 1967 Life zone ecology, (rev. ed.)).
Javanshir K. 1976. Atlas of Woody Plants of Iran. National Society of Natural Resources and Human Environment Conservation, Tehran, Iran, 163 pp.
Liu QJ, Kondoh A, Takeuchi N. 1998. Study of changes in life zone distribution in north‐east China by climate–vegetation classification. Ecological Research 13(3), 355-365.
Liu Y, Chen Y. 2006. Impact of population growth and land-use change on water resources and ecosystems of the arid Tarim River Basin in western China. The International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 13(4), 295-305.
Lugo AE, Brown SL, Dodson R, Smith TS, Shugart HH. 1999. The Holdridge life zones of the conterminous United States in relation to ecosystem mapping. Journal of biogeography 26(5), 1025-1038.
Merriam CH. 1898. Life zones and crop zones of the United States (No. 10). US Department of Agriculture.
Power AG. 2010. Ecosystem services and agriculture: tradeoffs and synergies. Philosophical transactions of the royal society B: biological sciences 365(1554), 2959-2971.
Saumel I, Ziche D, Yu R, Kowarik I, Overdieck D. 2011. Grazing as a driver for Populus euphraticawoodland degradation in the semi-arid Aibi Hu region, northwestern China. Journal of arid environments, 75(3), 265-269.
Smith RL. 1974. Ecology and field biology. Harper & Row, New York, NY.
Solomon AM, Shugart HH. 1993. Vegetation dynamics and global change. Chapman & Hall, New York, NY. USDA Forest Service Miscellaneous Publication no. 1391.
Triantakonstantis DP, Kalivas DP, Kollias VJ. 2013. Autologistic regression and multicriteria evaluation models for the prediction of forest expansion. New Forests, 44(2), 163-181
Zhang W, Ricketts TH, Kremen C, Carney K, Swinton SM. 2007. Ecosystem services and disservices to agriculture. Ecological economics 64(2), 253-260.
Zhang Z, Ke C, Shang Y. 2014. Studying Changes in Land Use Within the Poyang Lake Region. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing 1-11.
Zheng Y, Xie Z, Jiang L, Shimizu H, Drake S. 2006. Changes in Holdridge Life Zone diversity in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China over the past 40 years. Journal of arid environments 66(1), 113-126.
Mohammad Mousaei Sanjerehei (2014), Conversion of life zone to ecologically less valuable land cover in Iran; JBES, V5, N1, July, P544-554
https://innspub.net/conversion-of-life-zone-to-ecologically-less-valuable-land-cover-in-iran/
Copyright © 2014
By Authors and International
Network for Natural Sciences
(INNSPUB) https://innspub.net
This article is published under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0