The Impact of Climatic Factors on Land Use Change between Annually Crops Groups in Iran: Application of Spatial Fractional Multinomial Logit Model

The current study attempted to investigate the climatic factors impacts on land use change between annually crops groups including cereals, beans, industrial crops, vegetables, cucurbits and forage crops in Iran counties. To doing this, agricultural data during 2012-2013 and climatic data in 1391 were used. To estimating of spatial fractional multinomial logit model, the agricultural and climatic variables were matched with geographical data and 336 counties were studied regarding available data. According to the results, industrials crops cultivation area shares have positive spatial dependence and increasing of industrials crops land shares in each county increases industrials crops land shares in nearby counties. Considering estimated marginal effects, one degree temperature increasing raises cereals, vegetables and cucurbits land shares 1, 0.1 and 0.2 percent respectively and decreases beans land share 0.3 percent and one millimeter rainfall increasing decreases vegetables land share 0.008 percent. So, The ongoing process of climate change, specially temperature increasing will increase cereals, vegetables and cucurbits land shares and will decreases beans land share in future years. Therefore, to meeting the part of future population food needs, taking of adaptive strategies for beans is more advised comparing to other annually crops.