Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EVALUATION THE SUSTAINABILITY OF TWO FOREST REGIONS UNDER BOTH PARTICIPATORY AND GOVERNMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING AHP

Majid Loghmanpoor, Zhirair Vardanian and Mohsen Elahi

Abstract

Today, continuous exploitation of forest resources and sustainable management of them are the main purposes of forest managers in each country. The aim of this study is to evaluate participatory management and Governmental Management on ecological conservation and natural resources sustainability, using socio- economic and ecological studies and gathered information through questionnaires and 10 R pilots that were implemented in the study area (series 3of Shiler - Mehrbanrud watershed and series 3 and 4 of section 8- Neka watershed- Zalemrud). Due to complex nature of this topic, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a comprehensive designed system for decision making using multi criteria was used to evaluate forest resources sustainability in these two areas. Necessary information for AHP model was gathered, socio- economic data and ecological data analyzed using SPSS Ver.17 software, quantitative data were used in the model directly and qualitative data were converted to quantitative form and used in the model. The weight of all model components (criteria, sub criteria and options) were calculated based on the expert opinions and using Expert choice Ver. 11, these weights are relative weights and final weights were calculated through incorporating them. Final results showed that the weight of first area (series 3 of Sheiler) and second area (series 3 and 4 of section 8) is 0.47133861205 and 0.52812922795 respectively on the basis of forest resources sustainability. These results show that forest resources of series 3 and 4 of section 8 are more sustainable than the resources of series 3 of Shiler.