A Preliminary Validation and Assessment of a GIS Approach Related to Precision Forest Harvesting in Central Italy

There has been a growing awareness of the need for sustainable forest management among engineers during last decades. The selection best harvesting system logging operations plays fundamental role in this effort. Nowadays, decision-making process, rely on their own experience, and it is to be expected that evaluation level appropriateness may biased. potential solution problem implementation AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) GIS (Geographic Information System) environment. application gives objective information thus reduces bias deciding which harvest use. aim study was evaluate reliability GIS-AHP approach applied development plan public estate Central Italy. Three extraction methods were considered: forwarder, cable skidder, all-terrain yarder. Thus, model run by relying basic data attainable from local then detailed provided field collected 10 harvested blocks. Among these, three blocks, method changed forwarder skidder. Statistically significant differences found between suitability values obtained those retrieved surveys skidders but not yarders.