Investigations on usage of geographical information systems on selecting of forest road routes

SUMMARY INVESTIGATIONS ON USAGE OF GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS ON SELECTING OF FOREST ROAD ROUTES During the forest road planing process determination of road routes requires the evaluation many factors. The information needed for forest road planning are obtained from different sources and different standards. The variation in data sources cause problems in effective and collective usage of these data. During planing process continued with traditional methods, studies which are constructed both on topographic maps and on obtaining and evaluation of data from management plans form big amount of work density. In other to do these processes easily it is aimed to utilise from geographical information systems. The forest road route on digital map are prepared to reach each point of area of planning unit. A database that can be used from other forest disciplines is formed in order to choose the best solution route among the prepared forest road routes. In these purpose, management plan maps and data obtained from area are constructed as different geographic information system coverage. In addition from the data processed as available data, new data was produced with geographical information systems analysis and used during other analysis. Ormanüsütü planing unit was selected as application area. 107706 m. forest road was planed as a result of these studies. Road density, road interval and rate of forest access were determined respectively 20,40 m/ha, 490 m., 61,73. With these roads 4923,27 ha of 5278,27 ha. forest area was used for exploitation. Total 701151,880 m3 stand volume of forest and 14381,548 m3 increment was obtained on these forest access areas. Contemporary planing techniques were used and a big amount of economy was obtained from and work power as a result of this analysis a forest network plan that gives the numerical values formed the best solution forest studies has been preperated. Key Words: Forest Roads, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Forest Transport, Road Routes, Database