The Zagros forests (west of Iran) have been highly exploited in recent decades by human impacts. Easy access, abundance and variety of valuable forest yields have led to population growth density, creation of new residential areas and deforestation activities. In order to determinate the distribution and rate of deforestation from 1995 to 2006 by using the satellite imagery (IRS-1C and  LANDSAT...

Nacrtak This paper describes a program for optimizing forest road alignments using the Dijkstra shortest path method and a cubic spline function. We previously developed a method for optimizing forest road alignments once a series of intersection points (IPs) were selected manually using Tabu Search. The application of the program to a part of Capitol State Forest in Washington State, USA indic...

The use of forest roads as foundations for dam construction by beavers is a recurrent problem in the management of forest road networks. In order to limit the damage to forest roads, our goal was to calculate the probability of beaver dam installation on culverts, according to surrounding habitat parameters, which could allow for improvement in the spatial design of new roads that minimise conf...

Roads through tropical forest create linear disturbances that have unknown consequences for forest birds. We studied how a narrow, rarely used road through otherwise undisturbed Amazonian forest affected the movements and area requirements of understory birds that form mixed-species flocks. Differences in road maintenance led to two distinct treatments along the same road. Trees along the “clos...

The current forest road design systems are not capable of making computer-aided design judgments such as automated generation of alternative grade lines, best fitting vertical alignment for minimizing the total road costs, or consider environmental impact. A three dimensional (3D) forest road design model was developed as a decision support tool that provides a designer with a quick evaluation ...

1Alumni and George Peak Jr. Professor of Forest Economics and Policy, School of Forestry and Wildlife Science, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5418 (phone: 334-844-1067; fax: 334-844-1084; e-mail: [email protected]). 2Assistant Professor, Institute of Finance and Economics Research, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, No. 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai, PR China, 200433 (correspondin...

Due to the dispersed nature of forestry operations in much of the world, only a subset of a given forest road network are used in any year. Specifically, spur roads are generally only used when harvesting operations are adjacent to roadways; otherwise, they remain unused or only have infrequent administrative traffic. During these periods of light use, a substantial amount of organic litter may...

Various international bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have proposed guidelines for safeguarding biodiversity. Nevertheless, quantitative criteria for safeguarding biodiversity should first be established to measure the attainment of biodiversity conservation if biodiversity is to be safeguarded effectively. We conducted research on the impact of logging on biodiversity of dung ...

Forest degradation in the tropics is often associated with roads built for selective logging. The protection of intact forest landscapes (IFL) that are not accessible by roads is high on the biodiversity conservation agenda and a challenge for logging concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). A frequently advocated conservation objective is to maximize the retention of road...