The Desert Environment in Iran

摘要

The desert environment in Iran is an equilibrium between land resources and flow of energy at a time in which biomass production has decreased. The degradation of resources in a desert region is related to: 1) the geological history (e.g. tectonic), which influences erosion, base level changes in endoreic basins, and includes volcanic, hydrothermal and diapiric activity; and lithological parameters, including weathering processes of rocks and minerals, and precipitation/dissolution of evaporites. 2) geographic setting, e.g. the "horse latitude", climatology and global climate change, influence energy flow via insolation, atmospheric circulation, evaporation, wind activity and Coriolis effect, and have led to more desertification in the eastern part than in the western part of Iran, in this endoreic area of low latitude. The cold geological period produced more biomass than the warm period. Also in these areas, a few species of halophytes or xerophytes such as Tamarix, Salsola, Suaeda, Haloxylon and Prosopis are the dominant vegetation.