Location prioritization by means of multicriteria spatial decision-support systems: A case study of forest fragmentation-based ranking of forest administrative areas

Abstract

Forest and conservation managers as decision-makers must deal with many competing criteria in order to find optimal solutions which best describe sustainable forest development. The aim of the study was to elaborate a framework for forest fragmentation-based forest administrative area ranking in order to support sustainable forest development. In this paper there is presented and discussed a two-stage multiple-criteria spatial decision-support system (MC-SDSS), employing it to locate a potential forest administrative area under different forest fragmentation conditions. Lithuanian state forest enterprises were selected as forest administrative areas and used as alternative options for ranking. Amount of forest areas, representing different forest fragmentation components (edge, perforated, undetermined, interior, patch, and transitional) in each state forest enterprise area, was taken as a criterion for alternative evaluation. Calculations of criterion significance were performed. Ranks for state forest enterprises were defined using technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and simple additive weighting (SAW) method. Results of this study suggest that forest fragmentation-based ranking of forest administrative regions is so important that it could potentially influence ecological processes during recurring forest development.