Ilam province loses 1,200 hectares of oak forests annually

Shafaq News/ Ali Najafi Far, head of the Research and Training Center for Agriculture and Natural Resources in Ilam Province, western Iran, announced that an average of 1,200 hectares of oak forests are either dried up or destroyed annually in the province.

A report by the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Najafi Far stating that research from the Oak Tree Decline Monitoring Project indicated that 20,000 hectares of oak forests have been lost over the past 17 years.

"The first signs of drying and rotting in the oak trees appeared between 2003 and 2015," Najafi Far said. "This trend has increased due to climate change, human activity, soil moisture deficiency during the hot months, and soil texture."

Najafi Far explained that completely dry trees and the dry branches of other trees contribute to carbon wastage and reduce the carbon sequestration efficiency of the Zagros forests' ecosystems.

In the first phase of oak tree drought studies from 2003 to 2012, the forest area in the province decreased from 542,252 hectares to 516,179 hectares, with 26,073 hectares destroyed or dried up. The studies indicated that 13,226 hectares of forest land were lost due to human activities, while 12,847 hectares were affected by climate change.

Despite severe drought conditions from 2003 to the early last decade, which averaged over 1,300 hectares annually, recent years have seen a reduction in the rate of tree drying due to countermeasures such as reforestation, removal of dead trees, restoration of damaged trees, pest control, and other interventions.

Out of the two million hectares of land in Ilam Province, 1.7 million hectares are natural lands, with 90% of the province's forests consisting of various oak species, according to the report.