On 28 August, 2020, Mostafa Kheshti, Associate Professor from the School of Electrical Engineering, Shandong University, published his article "Protect Iran's Zagros forests from wildfires" in Science magazine (IF=41.845).

Zagros oak forests play a strategic role in Iran’s ecosystem and livestock. These ancient forests, include trees that are more than 400 years old and cover an area of 6 million hectares that is 40% of the country’s forest area, and are home to a wide variety of wildlife including wolves, Persian squirrels, the endangered Persian leopard and the Persian fallow deer which was once thought extinct. The Zagros forests feed more than 50% of Iran's livestock and include 40% of the country's most important riverine sources of fresh water.

With recent catastrophic wildfires in 2020, such as in USA and Australia, Mostafa Kheshti travelled to Iran and collected data on the wildfires in that country and found that the number of wildfires has been growing at extremely high rate compared to the country’s past years. He found that from March to June, 2020, more than 50,000 hectares were burnt, compared with the average of 15,000 hectares of Iranian forests that burn annually in wildfires. Further investigations showed that besides the natural events, there were deliberate and accidental human involvements in these wildfires.

This article was also an effort to indicate the importance of focusing on global warming as one of the biggest threats to societies and environment, which are already easily observable in today’s World.

Mostafa Kheshti, joined School of Electrical Engineering at Shandong University on August 2017. His main research interest is renewable energy systems which can also benefit to address the climate change problems. Mostafa Kheshti is supported by the Future Young Scholars Program of Shandong University.

Paper Link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6507/1066.full