Multiple criteria decision making approaches for forest sustainability (case study: Iranian caspian forests)

The aim of this research is to investigate the sustainability of economic, social and environmental aspects in Iranian Caspian forests. To do so, questionnaires were used for data collection. The questionnaires were distributed among the forestry experts in Guilan province, north of Iran. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Network Analysis (ANP) were used for prioritizing the indicators of sustainable forest management. Investigated criteria and indicators are derived from the Near Middle East Process. The Expert Choice and Super Decision software were used for data analysis. The results of this study showed that the wood products sub-criterion and conservation of biological diversity have been known the most important criteria in the sustainable forest management in the study area using of AHP and ANP. Furthermore, the priorities of the other indicators are different in AHP and ANP. This could be due to the reciprocity relations in the ANP and this method has more strengths than AHP.