Planning of Forest Road Network and Analysis in Mountainous Area

Forest roads designing and construction in mountainous areas involves various economic and environmental requirements. For this reason, road managers must consider as many alternative alignment alternatives as possible in order to find the solution that minimizes construction, maintenance cost and negative environmental impacts. The purpose of this study was to design the forest road network using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based on Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and RoadEng in mountainous area of Turkey. These methods were employed using slope, aspect, elevation, growing stock, hydrographic network, soil, bedrock, and landslide susceptibility map of the study area. Morever, road network generated by GIS-MCDAROADENG method compared with existing road networks. Firstly, the required data was collected from the study area. The effective factors that impact on road network in study area were identified and the necessary maps were generated and classified. The next step, related the importance and the role of the mentioned elements in the cost of road construction, the maps prepared were rated using MCDA to determine the weight of both effective factors. Secondly, by overlaying the weighted maps of affecting factors, a forest potential map of road construction was prepared. Thirdly, map was categorized into the three following classes: high, moderate and low capability. On the current map planned road network designed using the RoadEng ® Software. Finally, the planned road network was evaluated by merging the planned road network and road planning potential map based on Backmund criteria. The results of this study showed that planned roads were mainly located high and moderate roading capability (93,5%), distributed on sandy loam and andesite-basalt bedrock (45%) and accessible region (slope < 45%) comprise 26 % of study area. The planned road provided an accessibility of 85% for the logging planning area. The planned road network with 44 km length, 8.9 m/ha road density and 1123m road spacing. These results suggest that multi-criteria evaluation method can be more accurately to design forest road planning in mountainous area. The methodology used for this study can also be applied to the other forest area. [Erhan Çalışkan. Planning of Forest Road Network and Analysis in Mountainous Area. Life Sci J 2013; 10(2): 2456-2465]. (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com 341

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