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Watershed Planning within a Quantitative Scenario Analysis Framework
Published on: July 24, 2016
An expert-based approach to forest road network planning by combining Delphi and spatial multi-criteria evaluation
Elyas Hayati1, Baris Majnounian, Ehsan Abdi
1Forestry and Forest Economics Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, POBox 4314, Iran. hayati_fe@ut.ac.ir
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
|May 9, 2012
Summary
Sustainable forest management requires efficient road planning. This study presents a three-stage methodology using Delphi, Analytic Hierarchy Process, and GIS to identify low-impact forest road networks, balancing environmental and cost factors.
Area of Science:
- Forestry
- Environmental Management
- Geographic Information Systems
Background:
- Road construction significantly alters forest landscapes.
- Sustainable forest resource management necessitates an optimized road network.
- Minimizing environmental impacts of forest roads is crucial for ecological balance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and evaluate a methodology for efficient and environmentally conscious forest road network planning.
- To integrate technical, economic, and environmental factors into forest road design.
- To identify the lowest-impact road network alternatives.
Main Methods:
- A three-stage methodology combining the Delphi method, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and spatial multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) in a Geographic Information System (GIS).
- Delphi method for identifying key planning criteria (e.g., slope, lithology, proximity to water bodies and faults, susceptibility to landslides and erosion, geology, soil texture).
- AHP for weighting criteria, followed by fuzzy MCE in GIS to create a suitability map and evaluate road network alternatives using the PEGGER tool.
Main Results:
- Identified critical criteria for forest road planning: ground slope, lithology, distance from streams and faults, landslide and erosion susceptibility, geology, and soil texture.
- Developed a suitability map integrating weighted environmental factors.
- Evaluated nine road network alternatives, demonstrating the methodology's effectiveness in identifying options that meet environmental and cost considerations.
Conclusions:
- The proposed three-stage methodology is effective for identifying environmentally sound and cost-efficient forest road networks.
- The identified planning criteria are valuable for forest road management.
- Recommends applying this multi-criteria evaluation approach in other regions for improved forest road planning.
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