Management challenges and adaptations with climate change in Iran forests

Abstract

Nowadays, climate change is one of the global issues. Given the occurrence of climate change in different parts of the world in recent years, a major concern of environmental and forestry activists and policy makers has been to explore the direct and indirect deteriorative impacts of this phenomenon on different facets of forest ecosystem and local communities. The present study run an opinion poll among 315 activists, students, teachers, and experts of environment in Iran during 2019 to find out the extent to which they believed that severe climate change was happening in different forests and how they assessed the performance of environmental resources and forest management practices. The analysis of data exhibited that over 90% of the participants acknowledged the occurrence of severe climatic changes in recent years and almost none of them assessed the present forest management style to be appropriate. On the other hand, the participants suggested that the Zagros and northern forests of Iran have most severely been affected due to climate change by about 53% and 31.7%, respectively. Thus, to reduce destructive impacts of climate and global warming on human and local community, it is recommended to prioritize climate change adaptive management strategies in these regions.