Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Elham Ghasemifar
• Somayyeh Naserpoor

Abstract

Zoning by climatic elements and factors is one of the most crucial issues which is of interest due to its importance in agriculture and architecture. Climate is the result and function of dominant elements and factors in the area. In this article, zoning is performed based on monthly temperature and precipitation average in 16 synoptic stations of Zagros area using 4 analytical methods - analyzing the main component, seasonal Z-score of temperature and precipitation, standard deviation of monthly and seasonal temperature, and climatic coefficients (De Martonne’s aridity index and Peggy climogram). These selected stations possess the most complete statistics since establishment in 2005. Z score results were verified using variance analysis. In the first 3 methods, zoning was performed using Ward’s method. 3 main components and 5 areas were identified which justify 91.84 percent of variable variances. Z score shows 5 areas in spring and autumn, and 4 areas in summer and winter for rainfall, and 4 areas in summer and 3 areas in other seasons for temperature. Variance analysis test proved the hypothesis (inequality of the areas). 5 main areas were reached based on the temperature data. Applying De Martonne aridity index and Peggy climogram, 3 and 4 areas were verified respectively. Finally, maps of precipitation and temperature areas of Zagros were produced by Inverse Distance Weighted method in GIS environment.

Keywords

• Zoning
• Clustering
• Principal Component Analysis
• GIS
• Zagros