Determination of the Most Appropriate Recommended Route Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) of Forest Road Network Evaluation Criteria in Geographical Information System (GIS)

  The aim of this study was to prepare the map of land suitability for passage in SaadAbad–Naharkhoran forestry plan, Golestan province and design the different variants of forest roads and choose the best one according to the amount of passage from land classes, openness percentage and surface distribution and modified tone-kilometer.

 The map of land suitability for passage was produced. Then, two variants were designed on this map using PEGGER and the amount of passage from land classes was estimated. Openness percentage and dead zones was determined by the calculating road density and skidding line and creating buffer. In Surface distribution algorithm, the distance from geometrical center of compartments to roads was measured. Tone-kilometer of variants was calculated according to skidding correction factor and conversion coefficient of volume to weight. The best variant was chosen based on AHP.

Results showed that existing road has passed from more suitability land as compared to other variants. Mean distance from geometric centers of compartment to first, second and existing variants were respectively 476.9, 480.3 and 428.8 m which indicates that existing road has better distribution. Maximum was recorded for first variant with amount of 82.3%. In tone-kilometer algorithm, each kilometer of existing road should bear 149.96 tones for extraction of woods from compartment. Existing road was better than two variants in terms of passage from suitability land, dead zone, surface distribution and ton-kilometer; so that after calculating the final weight it was determined that existing road is the best.

Besides considering all the criteria in evaluation of forest road network leads to more accurate understanding of the performance of each variant and choice the best one.