In recent years, floods as a climatic phenomenon have caused severe damage to natural resources and urban areas. Many studies focused on the impacts of floods in urban areas but studying this phenomenon in protected areas, and its impact on wildlife is a new science. Extensive studies on this issue have been conducted in different parts of the world and have shown that global warming and climate change have increased the frequency and severity of floods. In 2019, one of the most significant floods in recent decades occurred in the Zagros, which caused heavy damage in this region. This study aimed to eva‎luate the ecological impacts of the floods (before and after the floods) and quantify these effects to understand the extent of degradation in the species habitat, land use, population, and spatial distribution of wildlife in the Sefidkuh Protected Area of Lorestan Province. Sefidkuh Protected Area with an area of 70,000 hectares is located near the city of Khorramabad, and its predominant cover is Brantʹs oak (Quercus brantii) and Aleppo oak (Quercus infectoria). It is considered an essential habitat for wildlife species in the Zagros mountain. Zoning and extracting the flood extent in the early hours after the occurrence was performed using Sentinel-1 Flood Service method in the ESA SNAP software. Land cover layer was extracted with Random Forest classification algorithm for 2018 and 2019 (before and after the flood). Also, Normalized Vegetation Difference Index (NDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Normalized Difference Pond Index (POND) were calculated in ArcGIS. A total of 10 land features were obtained using Fragstate software to compare changes in the area of habitat patches in the region before and after the flood. Land-cover, human conflicts, topographic variables (slope, direction, and altitude), climatic variables, occurrence data, and environmental variables (NDVI, SAVI, NDWI, and NDPI) were used to modeling the habitat suitability of the key species in the region, including brown bear (Ursus arctos), wild goat (Capra aegagtus), Persian squirrel (Sciurus anamalus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa). The results show that floods affected the land cover of the region, and the most significant impacts were on the agricultural land use layer with a 50% reduction (150 hectares) and sparse forests with oak trees as a predominant species with a reduction of 2808 hectares. The results of the habitat suitability modeling show that all key species lost part of their suitable habitats. The most degraded area of suitable habitat belongs to the wild goat (C. aegagrus). We conclude that floods could be a factor affecting land use and destroying the habitat of key species.

حسين مرادي، منصوره ملكيان

سعيد پورمنافي، رسول يوسف پور

حسين بشري، محسن احمدي