Indigenous Plant Species from the Drylands of Iran, Distribution and Potential for Habitat Maintenance and Repair - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 359

Box 17.1 (continued)
On many accounts the CSP is a success. At a local level the rehabilitation
of the dryland and provision of new financial tools has helped fight the
poverty in the local villages and slowly improve their quality of life. On a
national perspective, it has helped provide a model for effectively preventing
the desertification of rangelands of Iran. And from a global standpoint, the
CSP has shown that local communities can help in the international efforts to
combat climate change by rehabilitating dryland ecosystems that potentially
play a significant role in absorbing atmospheric carbon.

4 Conclusions

Most of Iran is located in the Iran-o-Touranian zone. Iranian habitats support about
8,000 species of flowering plants (belonging to 167 families and 1,200 genera), of
which almost 1,700 are endemic. The driest portions of Iran-O-Touranian, Plain
zone are uninhabited, but in areas where enough rain falls to support habitation, hu-
mans have degraded the landscape. Agriculture, pastoralism, and woodcutting have
caused the loss of natural vegetation. One of the serious threats to most of the Iranian
ecosystems is drought, because much of Iran lies in the arid or semi-arid regions.
The other threats for plants are: overgrazing, fuelwood extraction, conversion of
forest and other wildlands for agriculture, road construction, overexploitation, and
unscientific extraction of plant resources for medicine, food, and other uses. Among
the overexploited species, some are medicinal plants, which were very abundant
until a few decades ago, but are now endangered in their natural habitats.
A good knowledge of the ecology and eco-physiology of the indigenous plants is
a basis for efforts to restore and rehabilitate degraded areas as well as a foundation
for efforts to protect the biodiversity.

References and Further Readings

Anderson SC (1999) The lizards of Iran. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, St.
Louis
Babaev A (1994) Landscapes of Turkmenistan. In: Fet V, Atamuradov KI (eds) Biogeography and
ecology of Turkmenistan. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 5-22
Bohn U, Gollub G, Hettwer C (2000) Reduced general map of the natural vegetation of Europe.
1:10 million. Bonn-Bad Godesberg
Boulos L, Miller AG, Mill RR (1994) South West Asia and the Middle East. In: Davis SD,
Heywood VH, Hamilton AC (eds) Centres of plant diversity. Information Press, Oxford,
pp 293-349