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A combined multi-criteria approach to assess forest management sustainability: an application to the forests of Eastern Macedonia & Thrace Region in Greece

  • S.I. : BALCOR-2017
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Abstract

Sustainable forest management should be pursued in all public forests of the EU countries, as this constitutes a legal requirement within the frame of the FOREST EUROPE policy. However, the forest management sustainability assessment process is a complex task, mainly because it involves integration of multiple environmental, socio-economic and institutional impacts at different spatial scales of different forest management policies, which are considered for implementation at any forest location. Moreover, the conflicts and interests of the various stakeholders related to the forest resources should be included in the assessment process. Much of the on-going research, therefore, focuses on the development of tools that can facilitate the integration of the different type of forest resource impacts and conflicts towards achievement of forest management sustainability. This paper presents a multi-criteria approach, which combined spatial analysis, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), spatially referenced impact indicator models for pairwise comparisons, the fuzzy extent analysis, fuzzy preference programming and the ideal solution concept in order to assess the performance of forest management sustainability at regional level. The combined multi-criteria approach was successfully implemented to the forests of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Region in northern Greece through the operation of the National Forest Governance Council. Seven forest management policies were subjected to sustainability assessment and an Overall Forest Sustainability Performance Index (OFSPI) was calculated for each one of them. The final ranking of the forest management policies was based on their OFSPI values. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis was conducted to explore robustness of the final solution.

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Acknowledgements

The work reported in this article has been carried out with funding from the EU LIFE Programme through the INFORM project, LIFE08/ ENV/ GR/000574 and co-financing from the Hellenic Ministry of Environment & Energy and the Eastern Macedonia & Thrace Institute of Technology.

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  1. Faculty of Geotechnical Sciences, Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, International Hellenic University, 1st km Drama-Mikrohori, 66100, Drama, Greece

    Vassiliki Kazana, Dimitrios Raptis & Christos Stamatiou

  2. Olympos- Centre for Integrated Environmental Management, 39 Androutsou Str., 55132, Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Angelos Kazaklis

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  1. Vassiliki Kazana
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Kazana, V., Kazaklis, A., Raptis, D. et al. A combined multi-criteria approach to assess forest management sustainability: an application to the forests of Eastern Macedonia & Thrace Region in Greece. Ann Oper Res 294, 321–343 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-020-03751-0

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