The effect of gas transmission to forest villages on firewood consumption and forest degradation in Babolkenar region, Mazandaran province

Since gas transmission to forests and forest dwellers has become more serious recently, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of gas transmission on the wood consumption and forest degradation by forest dwellers in Babolkenar area. For this purpose, 168 families, 36 security guards and 19 technical experts were selected and then questionnaires were prepared for each group. The questionnaires were filled by the field interviewers through the direct interview (According to the Likert scale, 1= very low, 5 = very high). New constructed roads were recorded after gas transmission using the field survey method. Then, the degraded area was calculated. The binomial test was used in order to compare the opinions of different groups. Degraded area due to excavations and road construction was calculated using AutoCad and ArcGIS software. According to forest dwellers, the use of municipal gas had largely prevented tree cutting (value of 4, based on the Likert scale), while security guards and experts stated it had slightly reduced the tree cutting (value of 3). Forest dwellers believed that the use of urban utilities had reduced the destruction; however, security guards and experts disagreed. The estimation results of the wood volume before and after the gas transmission showed that the views of all three groups were the same; they believed that the wood consumption decreased significantly in the first and second six months after the gas transmission. Results showed that the length of roads (15385 m) and stock routes (30772 m) were increased after running the gas transmission and the degraded area of the total forest area was calculated to be about 12 ha.