The forests, especially in such a big metropolis like Istanbul, not only should produce
forest products but also satisfy recreational demands of the people. Thus, forest engineers should
design optimum forest road network which allows forest service people to reach any places in
the forest and also provides public with access for recreational places. GIS techniques, used in a
wide variety of principles in many parts of the world, have been implemented in the field of
forestry to generate stand maps, develop land models, and plan forest roads. In this study,
network analysis method in a commonly used GIS tool (ArcGIS v9.2) is employed to plan a
forest road network subject to design objectives in the Research Forest of Istanbul University
Since the early ages, people had to move between places due to survival and protection
purposes. For this reason, roads have become necessary structures during the progress of
civilizations in any periods of human history (Umar ve Yayla, 1986; Senturk, 1992). In modern
life, as adequately designed and constructed highways still play important roles in
socioeconomic development of a country, well planned forest road plays a major role in
effectively performing forestry applications such as wood extraction, reforestation, protection,
etc.
In recent years, the services and standards of the forest roads have been changed with
respect to altering forestry practices mainly focusing on sustainable management of forest
ecosystem. For example, design standards of the forest roads should have some differences in
productive forest vs. recreational forest based on functionality of the forests. Therefore, starting
from the planning stage, forest roads have to be designed and build according to design
objectives considering the anticipated necessities of forest ecosystem and the society (Akgul,
2007).
In the field of forestry, GIS techniques have been used in generating stand maps,
developing land models, and planning forest roads. Hasdemir ve Demir (1997) and Erdas ve
Gumus (2000) investigated the capabilities of GIS in locating forest road sections in Turkey. In
those studies, digital maps have been used in determination of decision variables such as road
density, road spacing, average skidding distance, etc. Besides, GIS techniques have been used in
forest road network and earthwork allocation studies (Tunay, 2000; Gumus et al., 2003)