Study of forest development on regeneration (Case Study: Sistan forestry plan, Gilan Province Rudbar city)

One of the most important events in forests is the regeneration of forest trees on which the sustainability of a forest depends. Therefore, understanding the factors affecting the establishment of forest species can help us of better understanding the different stages of the succession of this ecosystem. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of forest development on regeneration of tree species in Zilaki area of Rudbar town.

In this study, a part of forest roads in Series 4 of Zilaki rood at the age of 18 was selected in terms of homogeneity of height, aspect, slope changes and species composition status and with sufficient length (500 m). In this road, 6 transect was designed and  parallel plots were implemented at intervals of 1, 5, 10, 30 and 50 meters, with dimensions of 2 in 10 meters. The number and type of wooden trees and shrub species regeneration were sampled.

  According to the results, there was no significant difference between the mean regeneration of the species in the downstream (28.8 ± 13.9) and upstream of the road (32.4 ± 12.9). Analysis of variance showed that the mean number of regeneration between different intervals in the downstream and upstream of the road had a significant difference. In downstream, with a probability of 95%, the average number of regeneration were (39.0 ± 7.0) and (16.1 ± 10.4) at 5 and 1 meter of the road, respectively.

For the survival of any vegetation, the possibility of regeneration is so important and since the roads as the access routes to forest ecosystems are important both for humans and invasive plant species, road ecology studies is very important and valuable to monitor and control the impact of forest roads on biodiversity. So, the knowledge about the flora and edaphic conditions is essential to minimize the damage to vegetation and soil in the region influenced by forest roads.