The State of Forests Growing on Iron Oxide-Saturated Soils of Azerbaijan

Today Azerbaijan focuses on the non-oil sector development. The mining industry is actively growing, to become one of its driving forces. This is detrimental to the ecology of the region. The intensive mining activity has become one of the reasons for the mountain forests degradation in the West of the country. The article is devoted to the study of the mutual influence of the forests state and the presence of minerals containing iron oxides in the soil in the Lesser Caucasus region, which involves two industrially developed districts of Azerbaijan: Dashkesan and Gadabay. The study is based on the calculation of spectral indices of satellite imagery over a significant period of time. The paper shows the processing of satellite images, including their pretreatment, spectral, geospatial and correlation analysis aimed at finding quantitative coefficients of the relationship between the iron oxides fraction in the soil and the forest state. Spectral analysis allows determining the forest state by calculating the SIPI vegetation index, as well as the iron oxide minerals presence in the soils of the region by calculating the Ferric oxides multispectral index. Geospatial analysis is designed to assess the forest state in the areas of these mineral deposits. Correlation analysis is used to compare the degradation processes in the studied districts. There are electronic maps compiled by overlapping the forest state and the iron oxide content maps. There is a dynamics confirming an increase in the share of degraded forests in the areas of research. For citation: Aliyev B.G., Mamedaliyeva V.M. The State of Forests Growing on Iron Oxide-Saturated Soils of Azerbaijan. Lesnoy Zhurnal = Russian Forestry Journal, 2022, no. 6, pp. 117–125. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.37482/0536-1036-2022-6-117-125