Physical Analysis of Hail Fall Risk in Iran and the Consequent Damages on Agricultural Crops

Abstract

Hail is a meteorological phenomenon that directly concerns to agricultural sector in Iran. Hailstorms affect crop yield that depends on the crop species and the phonological time. In this investigation, climatological study of hail fall has been performed through the available dataset in 118 synoptic stations across the country during a period of 20 years (1985-2004) and hail event map was drawn. After analyzing the data and considering the produced maps, regarding the number of hail occurrence in the country, the following provinces respectively illustrate the highest annual mean of hail fall; Chaharmahal-e-bakhtiari, Ilam, Tehran and Kurdistan (about 4 times/yearly). In the next step, using the statistics of the agricultural insurance affairs during 1995-2005, cultivation areas damaged by hail fall in the farms of agricultural strategic products including; irrigated and rain fed wheat, grain, rice, cotton, sugar beet and potato have been studied, and then the classified maps of hail damage have been plotted for each province and crop. The produced maps indicate that most of the damaged area by hail fall has been related to irrigated wheat crop, with an annual average of 12690.8 hectares in the whole country, then the damaged crops were ordered respectively as following: rain fed wheat, sugar beet, potato, grain, cotton and rice.