Armed conflict and land-use changes: Insights from Iraq-Iran war in Zagros forests

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2020.102246Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Implementation protective policies during or after armed conflicts is essential for policymakers.

  • Aspects of Iraq-Iran war had very different effects on forest cover.

  • We found that deforestation rate after the Iraq-Iran war increased.

  • Forest loss significantly decreased during the war.

Abstract

The role of armed conflicts on land use/cover changes (LUCC), especially in Zagros forests of Iran, remains ambiguous after 30 years of the Iraq-Iran war. Our goal in this study was to assess LUCC in Sardasht related to the Iraq-Iran war in a 22 year period (1976–1998). LUCC of Sardasht city was evaluated using Landsat satellite image time series of MSS and TM data. We classified multi-temporal Landsat imagery using Random Forest classifier, then Land Change Modeler (LCM) was used to change detection and analysis. Change detection results showed that during 1976–1998, 5363.37 ha of forest areas were declined and converted to the croplands, rangelands and built-up areas. The highest decrease of forest areas was in periods of before (1976–1984) and after the war (1988–1993 and 1993–1998), 1331, 1734, and 2066 ha, respectively. While, during the war (1984–1988), only 54 ha decrease has taken place in forest lands of Sardasht. Also, increasing in other land uses during this period was significantly less than other periods. Calculation of annual rate of deforestation showed that the period of 1993–1998, has the highest rate of degradation in forest areas with a rate of −0.45%. While, during and before the war, it was −0.01% and − 0.20%, respectively. With the start of the war, residents of the region migrated to safe areas. The result of this migration was reducing forest conversion to other land uses. Trends in deforestation and forest degradation intensified after the end of the war. The causes of this destruction were destroying regulatory and control infrastructure on forests and natural resources in addition to the return of the inhabitants and an increase in demand for food and agricultural development. Moreover, after the war, the attention of the government was towards supplying the needs of human societies. Therefore, not enough attention was paid to monitoring and controlling over the degradation of natural resources. It is therefore necessary to reduce residents' dependence on natural resources through accurate and detailed planning and to increase their participation in forest conservation. In this regard, conservation programs should be continued strongly.

Introduction

Awareness of land use/cover patterns in a region is a necessary pre-requisites for the planning and implementation of effective land use/cover policies and sustainable regional development plans (Andersen et al., 2017; Van Khuc et al., 2018). Land cover is defined by the attributes of the earth's land surface and subsurface, including natural vegetation cover (like forests and rangelands), soil, water resources (surface and groundwater), croplands, and human structures (Lambin et al., 2003). Land use also refers to human economic and social activities on the earth surface. Land use and land cover are related to each other and we must consider both of them together (Campbell and Wynne, 2011).

Several factors cause land use/cover changes (LUCC) with different rates and scales including: biophysical factors, technological and economic changes, and organizational and political activities (Geist and Lambin, 2002; Groeneveld et al., 2003). Moreover, climate change and disturbances could exceed the ecological resilience of vegetation cover, resulting in a loss of forest cover and shifts to non-vegetative ecosystems (Seidl et al., 2016; Sohngen and Tian, 2016). Such effects could increase the existing pressure on people's livelihood and food security urging expansion of current croplands by forest clearing (Bele et al., 2015). Sudden and rapid changes that take place by warfare and armed conflicts can be added to these factors (Baumann and Kuemmerle, 2016; Baumann et al., 2015). However, less attention has been paid to how warfare can affect the environment (Ordway, 2015).

Over the past decades, 80% of armed conflicts and wars have occurred directly in forest areas with high biodiversity (Hanson et al., 2009; Ordway, 2015) and has been led to an increase in the rate of deforestation (Baumann and Kuemmerle, 2016; Gbanie et al., 2018; Gorsevski et al., 2012; Köthke et al., 2013). However, there is also some case studies that show armed conflicts contributed to forest recovery and expansion due to displacement of people through immigration from unsafe areas, depending on the nature and location of combat zone (Ordway, 2015; Stevens et al., 2011). In fact, unsafe conditions can lead to migration and decreasing the destruction activities. Other studies have also shown that after fighting ends due to refugees return (Ware, 2005), population resettlement, croplands expansion (Stevens et al., 2011) and reconstruction and new built-up areas (Xiao et al., 2006) have led to an increase in deforestation activities.

Evaluating the changes of spatial and temporal patterns of land use/cover by satellite imagery provides great opportunity to discover causes, effects and consequences of changes compared to the patterns related to direct and indirect human activities for scientific community (Cardille and Foley, 2003). In this regard, the spectral data of multiple sensors of Landsat is often used to land use/cover classification in regional scales (Judex et al., 2006; Lu and Weng, 2007) due to Landsat's long archive and being free of charge (Manandhar et al., 2009). Using Landsat satellite image time series can be considered for change monitoring caused by armed conflicts and warfare in a long-term period.

Iranian Zagros forests covers 11 provinces of Iran with a total area of 4,749,000 ha (20% of total forests in Iran) (Roozitalab et al., 2018), considered as a key strategic area for many economic and political reasons and play a critical role for improving climate condition, water supply, economic and social balance of the region. Zagros forests are divided in three classes due to differences mostly between climate and species: 1) northern Zagros, 2) central Zagros, and 3) southern Zagros. Sardasht city is located in northern Zagros with 91,117 ha forest area which estimated Iranian Forests, Range and Watershed Management Organization (FRWO). Unfavorable political, economic and social conditions in this forest area have caused rural population resident in or near forest land to meet their livelihood needs strongly depend on forest resources, which have led to the more degradation of forest areas (Henareh Khalyani et al., 2012; Henareh Khalyani et al., 2013).

During the Iraq-Iran war (1980–1988), this region was affected by the destructive effects of war like the other parts of Zagros in the West of Iran. As a case, four crowded parts of Sardasht city has been attacked with seven 250-kilograms of Sulfur Mustard bombs on June 28, 1987, which 4500 people exposed to mustard gas in the target (Malekari et al., 2013), and caused many human and environmental incidents and migration of Sardasht people to other areas (Ghasemi et al., 2008; Pourfarzam et al., 2009).

After four decades from Iraq-Iran war, no research has been done so far on the evaluation of effects of war on LUCC in Zagros forests. This war has always been considered as an influential factor in the psychological and social dimension of human beings during, in the short term and afterwards of it. In the years of the occurrence of war and then, attention to natural resources and the need for protection of it reduced inevitably, especially in the boundaries regions, due to the government's involvement with the issues and consequences of the war and standing other important issues in the priorities, Therefore, it seems that this issue has led to changes in land use/cover and vegetation, along with the direct and indirect effects of war on forests and natural resources in and around the combat zones. As a result, it is essential to understand the direct and indirect effects of armed conflicts on ecosystems (Stevens et al., 2011; Sutherland et al., 2009). Therefore, the main goal of this study is evaluating LUCC of Sardasht city before (1976–1984), during (1984–1988) and after (1988–1993 and 1993–1998) Iraq-Iran war. Specifically, we attempt to answer three research questions:

  • 1.

    How was the extent of changes in land use/cover precipitated by the Iraq-Iran war in Sardasht city?

  • 2.

    Did the war affect population changes and people's migration?

  • 3.

    Whether land use/cover changes before and after the war were the same?

Section snippets

Study area

Our study area was the landscape surrounding Sardasht city located in southwestern of West Azerbaijan Province in Iran, between 45°13′48″ to 45°42′00″ E longitude and 35°57′36″ to 36°28′12´´ N latitude, with a total area of 138,183 ha (3.8% of the province) in a height range of 591 to 2683 m above sea level (Fig. 1). The average annual precipitation of region is 724 mm that winter and summer are the seasons of the most and least annual rainfall, respectively. Wet season in the study area is

Thematic accuracy assessments of the land use/cover maps

The confusion matrices of the land use/cover maps are provided in Table 2. The results shows that each of the five land use/cover maps were in general highly accurate. The 1984 land use/cover map had the highest overall accuracy (0.90 ± 0.04) with a 95% confident interval, followed by the 1988, 1998, 1993 and 1976 land use/cover maps.

Change analysis

Spatial pattern and the total surface of land use classes in Sardasht for 1976, 1984, 1988, 1993 and 1998 are presented in Fig. 2, Fig. 3. During the entire study

Discussion

This study showed that armed conflict and warfare as one of the fastest drivers of changes, caused significant and drastic changes in land use/cover of Sardasht city. The obtained results from Fig. 3 and Table 3 showed that the degradation of forestlands significantly decreased during the war period and was lesser than pre-war and post-war periods. Other studies also showed the same effects of war. For instance Stevens et al., (2011) in exploring the effects of armed conflict on Nicaragua's

Conclusion

Warfare and armed conflicts are a large form of socio-economic shocks. With the onset of the war and increasing bombardment and conflicts in Sardasht, the residents of the area migrated to safer places (Iman and Mohammad Pour, 2004). This migration could be considered to be a cause to reduce the conversion of forest lands to other land uses during the war. After the end of the war and return of residents to Sardasht, the process of destruction of forest lands intensified. One of the possible

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This paper has been extracted from a PhD thesis which financially supported by Urmia University, Iran. We are gratefully acknowledge of very beneficial technical assistance and advices which received from Prof. Dr. Tobias Kümmerle, Dr. Matthias Baumann, Dr. Sebastian van der Linden and Dipl.-Geogr. Benjamin Jakimow, Humboldt University of Berlin. We thank the anonymous reviewer(s) whose comments greatly helped improving the manuscript.

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