Assessing Trends and Drivers of Burned Areas in Forest Areas in Kurdistan Region

Wildfires pose an escalating threat to the oak-dominated forests of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a biodiverse Zagros Mountains hotspot where long-term fire trends and drivers have remained poorly quantified. This study assessed interannual variability and long-term trends in total and forest-specific burned area from 2001 to 2024, examined spatial differences across Duhok, Erbil, Halabja, and Sulaymaniyah governorates, and identified primary climatic drivers of fire extent using MODIS MCD64A1 Version 6.1 burned-area data (500 m resolution) masked to a conservative ~2,000 km² oak forest layer derived from high-resolution 2024 NDVI classification. Across the entire Kurdistan Region, burned area averaged 687 km² year⁻¹ (SD = 640 km²), totalled 16,486 km² over the 24-year period, and exhibited a statistically significant upward trend of 31 km² year⁻¹ (Theil–Sen slope; Mann–Kendall p = 0.024). Forest burned area averaged 356 km² year⁻¹, displayed a significant increasing trend of 17 km² year⁻¹ (Mann–Kendall p = 0.016), and reached a cumulative 8,542 km²—more than four times the current ~2,000 km² forest cover—with Duhok and Sulaymaniyah together accounting for 77 % of cumulative forest loss and showing the strongest upward trends. Maximum temperature and drought severity were the dominant climatic drivers: each 1 °C rise in monthly maximum temperature increased expected burned area by 12.8 % (incidence-rate ratio = 1.128, p < 0.001), and a one-unit worsening of PDSI increased it by 22.5 % (incidence-rate ratio = 1.225, p < 0.001), with marked non-linear escalation above ~32 °C and PDSI < –2. These findings demonstrate that climate warming and drying are rapidly intensifying fire regimes across the Kurdistan Region and its forests, pushing oak ecosystems toward potential irreversible degradation, and underscore the urgent need for governorate-specific fire-management strategies and enhanced regional monitoring to protect this critical ecological and cultural resource under ongoing climate change.