A Geostatistical Exploratory of Spatiotemporal Variation of Kerman’s Haloxylon and its Hazardous Effect in Formation of Dust Centers

Dust and smooth-sands which rise up from aerosols resources have always extreme environmental and economic damages. Since 1961, development of artificial forest (Haloxylon species) has stabilized dust formation in the critical center of south and south east of Kerman. Some reports from vegetation degradation, prompted researchers to use integrative methods for monitoring and modeling the possible changes of the vegetation index. This research has used remotely sensed data (bands: 3 and 4, TM/ETM, Landsat) to obtain Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and studied spatiotemporal density changes of the artificial forest (according to Moran spatial autocorrelation index during the years 1987, 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2014). Meanwhile, for assessment of the role of drought effects in Haloxylon forest degradation, daily precipitation dataset of Kerman has been analyzed by using Effective Drought Index (EDI) during 1980 to 2013.  While, results show that the local average of NDVI has a meaningful decrease during the mentioned years, and the Moran index was increased and expanded the cluster patterns intensively. These changes represent some disorders in the initial linear structures of planted region as well as spotted Haloxylon trees. Expansion of droughts in association with human intervention increases the intense forest degradation in the borders of Tehran and Joopar roads. Indeed, the continuation of this process is hazardous, and considered as serious threat for developing the national plans such as Haftbagh-e-Alavi (east of region2).