Classification of forest district direction according to salvage felling by cluster analysis

Abstract

Forests in good health are essential to sustain wood resources and ecosystem services. Causes of negative impact on forest health include among others biotic agents like pest insects, pathogens, game and grazers, abiotic agents such as fire, wind or snow, frost or drought and anthropic causes like poor harvesting practices or air pollution. Salvage felling is one of the indicators of the forest health quality and stability. The aim of this study was to show that importance of salvage felling consist of approximately 20-25 percent of Turkey timber production and cluster analysis, which has been used in different disciplines, can be used in forestry. As cluster method, the k-means method was used. In terms of determination of clusters, the data used were salvage felling according to human effect and not human effect. In this study information was obtained from the annual reports (1997-2015 years) of Forest General Direction of Turkey. The clusters were obtained for each salvage felling groups separately. Each group was divided into four clusters. The differences of groups were compared with statistical analysis.

Keywords

• salvage felling
• cluster analysis
• variance analysis
• olağanüstü eta
• kümeleme analizi
• varyans analizi