Evaluation of ecological capability of Aq Dagh Protected Area for forestry uses

Introduction In order to achieve sustainable development for a variety of uses, ecological vision can be considered as a solution to environmental problems. With the efficient use of land for a variety of applications it will be possible to prevent the biological resources destruction. Uses’ planning with ecological view is a logical solution to eliminate poverty chain in the society, environmental crisis and providing conditions for sustainable development. Evaluation of ecological capability is a process which attempts to establish an appropriate and balanced development between human and nature through adjusting their relationship. Due to the fact that natural environment has limited ecological capabilities for human use, ecological capability through preventing current crisis provides appropriate background for environmental planning.
Materials and Methods The environmental capability will help lead to solving conflicts. Considering that in order to assess the suitability of a number of factors must simultaneously be considered the use of GIS with great potential in the field of producing, editing, analyzing and modeling the data as an effective tool for better planning and in line with the study area is considered. In the current study, ecological capability includes the following three basic parts. After performing these steps ecological potential of the study erea was determined. First: identify ecological resources. second: analyze and summarize data. Third: evaluation and classification of the land. Identification of ecological resources is as a first step to assess and plan the land because a large number of resources have been identified in the analysis of a large number of information, data will be broken into smaller categories After analyzing the identified resources, land ready to be evaluated. Land evaluation is to compare or measure of ecological environment in comparison to the benchmark. Aq Dagh protected zone with area of 93889 hectares has been located at south part of Ardebil province, South of Khalkhal town and North part of Zanjan province. The aim of current study was to investigate ecological capability of Aq Dagh protected area for forestry use and to evaluate correspondence level of current forestry use with ecological capability of the area. Information layers used in this study involved: soil, climate, and plant cover, land shape, hydrology and land use.
Results and Discution Mapping unit for environmental assessment and planning called environmental unit and can be considered as an ecosystem contract which is aligned micro-ecosystem. Map of the earth unit was earned by the combination of height map and slop map and direction map. The number of landform units is 874 units. However, the number of units after merging units with an area of 5 ha have been separated into five relatively homogeneous class. The investigation showed that forestry capability of the land is totally 11293/5 hectares. Results indicated absence of classes 1, 2, 7 of forestry due to biophysical condition, heights and area's climate in a way that only classes 3, 4, 5, 6 of forestry were present at the studied area. Use patterns of the identified forestry were in accordance with evaluation of their power in the area and it has forestry use under current conditions. This is while class 6 of forestry enjoys pasture use currently and from four forestry classes in the area the share of class 6 is more than others.
Conclusion In Aq Dagh protected area where height is less than 1000 m, the soil fertility is not great. Considering all circumstances this area was on the third floor forest user. Areas that their altitude is less than 1800 m and their slop is less than 55% were on the fourth floor. Areas that their altitude is between 1800-2600 and their slop is less than 65% were on the fifth floor. And areas that their altitude is less than 2600 m and their slop is less than 75% and their drainage is poor were on the sixth floor. In assessing the ecological and compliance with current account showed that a total of 3917 hectares (5/35%) of the study area has the possibility of becoming a forest,comply with current user and only mismatch is on the 6th floor area of forest ecological potential Which includes 7143 hectares (5/64%) and is now a pasture. Findings of current study indicated that the area has much limitation for industrial-forestry growth. Given that one-dimentional studies will not be effective, land use planning should be done in forest lands.