Forest Cover; on the Rise

Bureau of Engineering and Studies of FRWO announced that forest cover is on the rise based on the vegetation cover map to be released by FRWO. The map not only will boost forest management but also can help calculate forest cover precisely.

According to FRWO's website, the report indicated that the vegetation cover map of Iran published in 2011using the Landsat program gathered 21 layers of information for different land uses between 2004 and 2010. Based on the report, the update of the vegetation cover map that started in 2018 using Sentinel-2 will be finalized in March 2020 and would allow FRWO to precisely track changes in desert and rangeland areas.

The report added that due to climatic changes at the global level and variations in seasons and precipitation patterns, the temperature is rising worldwide that consequently increases the plants' water requirement can affect forest ecosystems.

Development activities including dam construction, mining and road network development also affect the natural resources status. Therefore, FRWO is mandated to reinforce factor of safety by more than 90 percent by the end of the sixth development plan.

According to FAO official statistics, about 12,000 hectares of forests are degraded annually in Iran due to land garbing, illegal logging and development activities, which are recovered by plantation operation.

According to the report, wildfires is among the degradation factors in forests in Iran that destroyed100 hectares of forests last year but fortunately their occurrence and intensity has decreased in recent years.

FRWO is able to predict the occurrence of wildfires based on meteorological data received from Iran Meteorological Organization (IMO) in the fire season. The map helps predict the location of fires based on forest type, species, and density and reduces the fire risk.