“The projects were launched in sand and dust hotspots of Mahshahr city during a ceremony held virtually with President Hassan Rouhani in attendance.
Over the past two years, reforestation plans have included plantation on 6,500 hectares in the cities of Ahvaz, Karun, Mahshahr, and Hoveyzeh, Kourosh Kiani, Director of provincial natural resources organization, said.
The surface water management plan will be implemented on 10,010 hectares, which will reach 13,500 hectares by the end of the year (March 21), he added.
Referring to a budget of 310 billion rials (nearly $7.3 million at the official rate of 42,000 rials) spent on the projects, he said that 223,000 out of 350,000 hectares of sand and dust sources in Khuzestan province have been controlled by implementing projects of moisturizing the soil, planting seedlings and vegetation, surface water management, and grazing management.
Since the past decade, southern and western provinces of the country are frequently hit by severe sand and dust storms, as well as drought, which is caused by both internal and external hotpots. Major external SDSs sources are Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
It was around the year 2005 that the first signs of sporadic SDS appeared in southwestern Iran. Just seven years later, sand and dust storms became so persisting and terrible that PM concentration reported 22 times above the safe levels.
In fact, Iran has been repeatedly exposed to SDSs due to its presence in the arid and semi-arid parts of the world; consumption, changing the pattern of cultivation, and climate change have increased the negative effects of this phenomenon.
The SDSs hotspots in other countries stretch to 330 million hectares, with an average of 150 million tons of dust generation per year, Ali Mohammad Tahmasebi, head of the national working group for SDSs mitigation, said in October 2020.
He went on to say that important dust sources in the country’s provinces estimated at 34.6 million hectares, with an average amount of 4.24 million tons of dust per year, of which 122.7 kilograms of dust per hectare is raised annually.
A sandstorm or dust storm is a meteorological phenomenon usually caused by strong and turbulent winds blowing over loose soil or sand and sweeping up large quantities of sand or dust particles from the ground, clouding the air and reducing visibility drastically.”
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