Application of Sensitivity Analysis in Forest Road Networks Planning and Assessment

In the last few years, public awareness has been on the increase about short- and long-term effects of forest roads construction on the environment. Therefore, forest road managers have to be concerned about the negative impacts and mitigate them as much as possible. This research conducted multi-criteria analysis techniques in a useful way to define the effective criteria and propose a model for forest road network planning and assessment so that both economic and environmental costs are minimized. The model was used for evaluating the alternatives and a sensitivity analysis was then performed to verify the model. Results of sensitivity analysis showed that, there were two alternatives out of nine, with the lowest negative impacts. As a result, analytic hierarchy process and sensitivity analysis (AHP-SA) revealed that the criteria slope, soil texture and landslide susceptibility had the highest weight values, respectively, and the criteria soil texture and distance from stream networks and distance from faults were especially sensitive to the changes. In addition, the sensitivity analysis proved that the model proposed in our analysis was almost reliable and stable, and only the first and second priorities were replaced in priority levels when the weight values of criteria were changed. Results showed that the methodology was useful for identifying road networks that met environmental and cost considerations. Based on this work, the authors suggest future work in forest road planning using multi-criteria evaluation and decision making be considered in other regions and that the road planning criteria identified by the experts in this study can be useful.