Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Environmental Earth Sciences (2019) 78:723 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-019-8763-5 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Efects of regional vegetation cover degradation and climate change on dusty weather types Hamid Nouri 1  · Mohammad Faramarzi 2  · Seyyed Hadi Sadeghi 2  · Samaneh Nasseri 3 Received: 10 March 2018 / Accepted: 29 November 2019 / Published online: 7 December 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Dust sources of west and south west of Iran are mainly from interior lands and neighbouring countries such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait which are infuenced by climate fuctuations and land use/land cover (LULC) degradation. The aim of this research is to investigate the impacts of regional vegetation cover degradation (RVCD) and climate change on dusty weather types in Zagros Mountain in the west of Iran. The RVCD was evaluated using MODIS satellite image series from 2000 to 2016 and its trend was predicted by Markov chain test for 2030, 2060, and 2100. Daily data of nine climatic variables were used to identify the weather types (WTs) using principle component analysis and cluster analysis in the base- line period. The results showed that four principle components could account for 93 percent of data variances. The extreme temperatures, precipitation, and sunshine hours were predicted using HADCM3 and LARS-WG models under A1B scenario and wind speed and relative humidity computed using Man Kendall test to analyse the WTs from the past to the future. The fndings indicated that six WTs could be observed of which about 77% and 84% of dusty days were recorded in Dusty WTs, including WT3 (warm/dry/windy) and WT4 (hot/very dry) during 1982–2000 and 2000–2016, respectively. Moreover, the frequency of Dusty WTs (WT3 and WT4) with the highest temperature and dryness in warm season will increase till 2060. Keywords Vegetation cover · Climate change · Dust · Weather type · Iran Introduction The distinguished dust storms in the Middle East come from local sources and the Sahara (Goudie and Middleton 2006). A dust storm is defned as a meteorological phenom- enon when its concentration is more than 150 µg/m 3 in Iran (Akbari 2011). In the recent decade, anthropogenic activi- ties, including war, economic problems, and mismanage- ment of natural resources, lakes, and wetlands, as well as climate change impacts have caused vegetation cover deg- radation (VCD) exacerbated by severe drought in vulner- able soils and reduced water and moisture storage in Iran and its western neighbour countries such as Iraq and Syria (Mohammadkhan 2009). Large dust storms were grouped, based on the similarity in spatial distribution and atmos- pheric patterns, in four main clusters. Cluster 1 is located in the northwest of Iraq and the northern part of Syria. Cluster 2 is situated in the west and southwest of Iraq; cluster 3 is observed in the east and southeast of Arabia, and cluster 4 is recorded in the southeastern Iraq and a small part of the southwest of Iran (Boloorani et al. 2014). The analysis of dominant atmospheric patterns in every cluster for dust storms in Iran shows that there is a low pressure in summer and a cyclonic and anti-cyclonic patterns in winter. In many other regions of Iran, these climatic patterns and vegeta- tion reduction have led to widespread dust storm formation (Boloorani 2014; Mohamadkhan et al. 2009). The west and southwest of Iran are directly affected by dusty weather coming from these main clusters and the mentioned countries. Desertifcation and VCD are the parameters afecting the wind erosion and dust generation (Gao and Liu 2010; Elie et al. 2017). These factors increase rural depopulation and poverty and might also infuence cli- matic variables (Verstraete et al. 2009; MEA 2005; Yu et al. * Hamid Nouri Hamid.watershed2009@gmail.com 1 Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources Engineering, Research Institute of Grape and Raisin, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran 2 Research Institute of Grape and Raisin, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran 3 Department of Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources Engineering, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran