Qualitative evaluation and optimization of forest road network to minimize total costs and environmental impacts

doi:10.3832/ifor0610-009

Qualitative evaluation and optimization of forest road network to minimize total costs and environmental impacts

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 5, Issue 3, Pages 121-125 (2012)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor0610-009
Published: Jun 05, 2012 - Copyright © 2012 SISEF

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An efficient and low-cost transportation network is necessary for sustainable management. Roading and log skidding are the most expensive and destructive operations in forest environment, unless carefully planned and evaluated. A transportation network has to be assessed and optimized to minimize the total cost of road construction and its environmental impact. The aim of this study was determining the optimum forest road network density, and evaluating the quantity and quality of the existing forest road network. In order to determine the optimum forest road network density, skidding cost, road construction and maintenance costs, and harvesting volume in each compartment were considered. Then optimum skidding distance was calculated with regard to optimum road density and total correction factors. The relative openness and efficiency coefficient of the existing forest road network were determined for the calculated optimum skidding distance, using ArcGIS. The results showed that the optimum road density, relative openness and road network efficiency coefficient were 21.5 m ha^-1, 90% and 32%, respectively. As a result, when the quality of a forest road network has to be evaluated, road network efficiency coefficient is more efficient than relative openness, that per se cannot be considered as an appropriate indicator.

Keywords

Forest road network, Environmental impact, Qualitative evaluation, Optimum road density, Efficiency coefficient, GIS

Authors’ address

(1)

Forestry and Forest Economics Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj (Iran)

Corresponding author

E Hayati
hayati_fe@ut.ac.ir

Citation

Hayati E, Majnounian B, Abdi E (2012). Qualitative evaluation and optimization of forest road network to minimize total costs and environmental impacts. iForest 5: 121-125. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0610-009

Academic Editor

Agostino Ferrara

Paper history

Received: Sep 23, 2011
Accepted: Mar 19, 2012

First online: Jun 05, 2012
Publication Date: Jun 29, 2012
Publication Time: 2.60 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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