Modelling the Impact of Land Cover Changes on Carbon Storage and Sequestration in the Central Zagros Region, Iran Using Ecosystem Services Approach
Mohsen Japelaghi,
Fariba Hajian,
Mehdi Gholamalifard,
Biswajeet Pradhan,
Khairul Nizam Abdul Maulud,
Hyuck-Jin Park
Affiliations
Mohsen Japelaghi
Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources & Marine Sciences (FNRMS), Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 46414-356, Noor 46417-76489, Iran
Fariba Hajian
Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran
Mehdi Gholamalifard
Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources & Marine Sciences (FNRMS), Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 46414-356, Noor 46417-76489, Iran
Biswajeet Pradhan
Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Building 11, Level 06, 81 Broadway, P.O. Box 123, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia
Khairul Nizam Abdul Maulud
Earth Observation Centre, Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Selangor, Malaysia
Hyuck-Jin Park
Department of Energy and Mineral Resources Engineering, Sejong University, Choongmu-gwan, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05006, Korea
Central Zagros region in Iran is a major hotspot of carbon storage and sequestration which has experienced severe land cover change in recent decades that has led to carbon emission. In this research, using temporal Landsat images, land cover maps were produced and used in Land Change Modeler to predict land cover changes in 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050 using Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network and Markov Chain techniques. Next, resultant maps were used as inputs to Ecosystem Services Modeler. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report data was used to extract carbon data. Results show that between 1989–2013 about half of forests have been destroyed. Prediction results show that by 2050 about 75% of existing forests will be lost and between 2013–2020 about 157,000 Mg carbon and by 2050 about 565,000 Mg carbon will be lost with more than US$1.9 million to 2020 and AU$3.2 million by 2050 economic compensation.
