Journal of Environmental Biology

Characterization of soil erosion and its implication to forest management

Nuray Misir*, Mehmet Misir, Uzay Karahalil and Hakki Yavuz

Faculty of Forestry, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon-610 80, Turkey

(Received: November 25, 2005 ; Revised received: June 15, 2006; Re-revised received: July 10, 2006;  Accepted: August 11, 2006)

Abstract: Forests have traditionally been managed to maximize timber production or economic profit, completely neglecting other forest values. Nowadays, however, forests are being managed for multiple uses. The basic requirement of multiple use forestry is to identify and quantify forest values and to determine management objectives. The priorities of management objectives, however, must be decided. In this study, a model predicting the soil loss for multi objective forest management was developed. The model was based on data from remeasurement of permanent sample plots. The data were gathered from 132 sample plots. Approximately 80% of the observations were used for model development and 20% for validation. The model was designed for even aged and uneven aged forests, as well as for forests with mixed and pure species composition. The explicatory variables in the model were mean diameter and number of trees. All parameter estimates were found highly significant (p<0.001) in predicting soil loss. The model fit and validation tests were fairly good. The soil loss model presented in this paper was considered to have an appropriate level of reliability. It can be used in the overall multi-objective forest management planning, but, it should be limited to the conditions for which the data were gathered.

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