Assessing Ecological Capacity for Afforestation and Increasing Forest area Use Gamma and AHP Operator Efficiency

Subject Areas : landuse

sahar tabibian ¹ , Armin Hashemi ² , Amirhosein Firouzan ³ , Mahsa HakimiAbed ⁴ , sirus bidarigh ⁵ , hamideh kavusi ⁶

1 - Assistant professor, Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran *(Corresponding Author)
2 - Associate professor, Department of Forestry, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
3 - Assistant professor, Department of Forestry, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
4 - Assistant professor, Department of Environment, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
5 - Assistant professor, Department of Agriculture, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran
6 - Master of Science, Graduated of Remote Sensing and GIS, Science and Research Yazd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran

Received: 2017-11-20 Accepted : 2018-03-11 Published : 2020-03-20

Keywords: Afforestation Area, Ecological capacity, AHP, GAMMA, Talesh County,

Abstract :

Background and aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the ecological potential of the land in order to increase the level of afforestation.Method: Initially, gradient maps, altitudes above sea level, geographical directions, temperature, rainfall, humidity, soil, canopy percentage with digitizing data received from relevant organizations and agencies. To evaluate ecological capability, fuzzy membership functions were standardized. In the following, the criteria used in the evaluation were prioritized based on multi-criteria evaluation and analytical hierarchy process and using the Expert selection software, the final weight was determined for each criterion.Findings: The criterion of altitude from the sea level has the highest value in the criteria and the criterion of gradient has the lowest value in the criteria. The results of this study showed that ecological power is directly related to ecological factors, especially climatic and physiographic factors. The results of the ecological capability assessment for afforestation operations with AND activated show that 5566 hectares of land are located in a very high class. The results of ecological capability assessment for afforestation with gamma activated show that 3098 hectares from the area are very large in class.Discussion and Conclusion: Finally, considering that about 60% of the area of the study area is covered with forest, according to the results of ecological power assessment for forestry, this study can be effective in recognizing the forestry potential and as a result of forestry development in this region.

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