Planning and Evaluating of Forest Roads Network with Respect to Environmental Aspects via GIS Application (Case Study: Shafaroud Forest, Northern Iran )

In this research effort has been made to introduce a method with GIS and AHP capability for planning forest road network. So that environmental factors such as stability are incorporated in the planning process. After collection of data and the necessary maps of study area, effective factors in routing and forest potential to road construction were determined and classified. After that, the maps of slope, stock volume per hectare, aspect, altitude, trees type and stability were produced by Arc GIS version 9.0. In the next step, concerning the importance of their categories, prepared map with regard to mentioned affecting factors, using of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), maps were rating to determine their weight. Then, by overlaying weighted maps of affecting factors, forest potential to road construction map was prepared. The results of this study showed that 88% of the planned roads are located in high and moderate roading ability regions, 48% in high stability regions, 67% in the region with tuff and basalt bedrock, 73% in the areas with sandy soil texture. The planned road provided an accessibility of 80% for the harvesting planning area. Results showed, using of this method it is provided optimum accessibility in the district that routs pass from stable regions. On the other hand, the introduced method can be used as useful method for planning of forest roads network in mountain areas in Iran and is preferred to previous and traditional method.