In collaboration with Iranian Watershed Management Association

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Center, Esfahan, Iran

2 BSc, Drought Management Center, Esfahan, Iran

Abstract

The wind erosion is one of the most striking examples and the most devastating flow identifiers of desertification among the difficult obstacle of development in many countries. The rate of affected area by wind erosion in Iran is more than six times the global average. So, the purpose of this study is climatic zonation in west and south-west of Iran with emphasis on wind. In this study, 77 annually and monthly climate variables were selected within and adjacent areas of studied location from weather stations of the Weather Organization of Iran. To reduce the number of variables and determining effective factors, factor analysis with varimax relation was used, and then the spatial distribution of the factor score area plotted in Surfer Ver. 10. The result of the factor analysis identified six factors of heating temperature-precipitation, wind mean speed, prevailing wind speed, relative humidity, the fastest wind speed and solar radiation. These factors included 24.01, 19.78, 14.65, 12.66, 9.85 and 3.09 percent and in total 84 percent of the data variance. In this region seven climate zones were determined with Ward method that include moderate Mediterranean region with relatively fast winds, hot and semi-arid region with fast winds, hot and relatively arid region with calm air, extreme hot, arid and windy with fast winds, extremely hot, arid and windy, relatively hot and semi-arid with calm air, extremely hot and arid with relatively fast winds that extend on 17, 10.5, 15.1, 22.1, 7.9, 9.9 and 17.4 percent of the study area, respectively.

Keywords