Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

ZONING THE SYLVAN HABITATS OF THE ROUDBARS SIAHROUD PROTECTED ZONE WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE ELIMINATION OF RESIDENTIAL COMPLEXES AND NON-SYLVAN APPLICATIONS USING THE GIS/RS TECHNOLOGY

Habib Hosseinpour Roudsari, Mousa Amini, Balal Dayan and Mir Mozaffar Fallahchai

Abstract

The Siahroud protected zone lies 35 km to the northeast of Roudbar on 49deg. 32 27.1 - 49deg. 50 45.9 eastern longitude and 36deg. 44 11.4 - 36deg. 54 26.4 northern latitude. This region came under the supervision of the Department of Environment on January 5, 2000. In the present research, aerial and satellite images, direct observations, sample-collecting and territorial photographs of the general appearance of the region have been used. The main objective of the present research is the zoning of sylvan habitats of the Siahroud protected zone with an emphasis on eradicating its residential pattern and non-sylvan applications using the GIS and RS technologies. In the first step, the contour lines and height points of the 1:25000 maps of the cartographic center has been used in order to prepare the hypsometric maps and identify the slope and slope inclination of Siahroud protected zone. The results show that the minimum height of the zone is 176 meters and its maximum is 2714 meters above the sea level. The highest level of elevated stories belong to the 1200 1800 meters class which constituted 45.44 percent of the whole region. The most extensive area of the slope stories belongs to the 30 65 class which comprises some 47.34 percent of the whole region. The inclinations of the western and southern slopes are 29.2 and 26.89 percent respectively and have involved the highest amount of the slope inclination stories level. In the next step, the 2007 IRS satellite image of Roudbars Siahroud zone has been selected in the ERDAS software. In introducing the classes (stories), satellite images, topographic data and Google Earth images were used in the scale of 1:25000. It is noteworthy that in introducing the classes which had unidentified or indistinct land uses, the longitude and latitude were specified, the land was examined through field search, the latitude and longitude were specified using GPS and its use was made out. The algorithm used in the observed classification was Maximum Likelihood Classification. The results produced showed that the total area of the forest in the region has been 13787.79 hectares which comprises 48.73 percent of the whole region. 195.25 hectares (0.69 percent) was dedicated to garden, 132.95 hectares (0.47 percent) to garden and agronomy, 2050.42 hectares (7.25 percent) to residential complexes, 1051.17 hectares (3.72 percent) to arid lands and 11072.16 hectares (39.14 percent) to pasturage. The residential area includes one city (Barehsar) and 54 villages which with an area of 2050.42 hectares comprise some 7.25 percent of the whole region. Key