Monitoring of Sarsakhti oak reserved forest by aerial photographs and full callipering

Vast areas of Iran are located in Irano-Touranian phyto-geographical region. Exploitation of forests within this region during past decades has changed these valuable forests to fragile ecosystems. Considering the most important ecological function of these forests, namely soil and water protection, the Sarsakhti oak forest was declared as protected area. In order to study the changes within last 50 years, crown canopy of forest has been studied as main factor using aerial photographs of 1955, 1995 and full callipering of the whole 20 ha stand in 2007. Results showed that the crown canopy density was decreased 6 (from 41 to 35) between 1955 and 1995 but increased again in 2007 to 40.