Evaluating the hazardous potential of the dieback of the Zagros Oak forests using the multi-criteria decision-making met
- PDF / 3,154,610 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 50 Downloads / 174 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Evaluating the hazardous potential of the dieback of the Zagros Oak forests using the multi-criteria decision-making methods Mohadeseh Ghanbari Motlagh 1 & Behzad Amraei 2 & Mansour Halimi 3 Received: 9 February 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020
Abstract Oak dieback and mortality, as a multifactorial phenomenon, have occurred in many forests of the world including Zagros forests in Iran. This phenomenon happens due to the complex interaction of the environmental stresses, pests, and socioeconomic issues. Given the importance of this issue, it is necessary to use an appropriate approach to find the areas with potential for dieback in order to guide the analyses regarding the decisions on forest conservation. Therefore, in the present study, geographic information system (GIS) was used to interfere with the analytic network process (ANP), multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), and fuzzy methods for zoning the susceptible areas of Oak forests in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in southwest of Iran. Criteria were selected as effective factors for dieback including slope, aspect, elevation, mean annual temperature and precipitation, pest, and distance from the farmlands. After preparing the initial maps of criteria, the weight of each criterion was calculated according to the experts and ANP and the fuzzy criteria maps were prepared using the membership functions, and the final maps of the areas with potential of dieback were produced by overlapping the criteria layers. The results showed that 45.32% of the Oak forests in the province have high and very high potential for dieback in the central and western parts. As a result, these areas have a higher priority for preventive and protective operation. Among the criteria, pests, temperature, and distance from the farmlands had the highest scores. Overall, the results obtained from the MCDM methods were satisfactory and efficient regarding studying the Oak dieback. Keywords Dieback potential . Quercus brantii Lindl . GIS . Kohgilouyeh and Boyerahmad Province
Introduction Oak forests of Zagros regions are considered as the most extensive plant habitats and the second natural forest ecosystem Responsible Editor: Haroun Chenchouni * Mohadeseh Ghanbari Motlagh [email protected] Behzad Amraei [email protected] Mansour Halimi [email protected] 1
Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Biology, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
3
Department of Climatology, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
in Iran (Imanyfar et al. 2019; Ahmadi et al. 2014). These forests are located in western Iran, near the northwestern border with Turkey that extend southward along Iraq border and cover 11 Iranian provinces with an area of more than 5 million hectares (Ghobad-Nejhad et al. 2018; Alesheikh and Mehri 2019). The index of Zagros region is Quercus brantii Lindl (Persian Oak) which in most parts constitute
Data Loading...
