Forest roads are the most important elements of forestry projects, the management, supervision, care, and only access way to the forest for mechanized harvesting and using other services of forests. The aim of this study was to compare the current annual increment of basal area in different distances from the road in northern forests of Iran. For this purpose, 50 plots were established in 5 dis...

Habitat destruction is the most important factor determining species extinction; hence, the management of wildlife populations necessitates the management of habitats. Habitat suitability modeling is one of the best tools used for habitat management. There are several methods for habitat suitability modeling, with each of having  some different advantages and disadvantages. In this study, we us...

The main goal of the present study was to implement a hybrid pattern of cellular automata model and particle swarm optimization algorithm based on TM and ETM+ imagery of landsat satellite from 1988 to 2010 for simulating the urban sprawling. In this study, an alternative model was implemented in two ways: the first method was based on two images (1988 and 2010) and the second one was based on t...

Roads and cities represent huge sources of degradation for adjacent ecosystems regarding nutrient cycling, energy, water flow and species composition. In this study we test the hypothesis that distance from roads and cities is associated with habitat loss and fragmentation in the caatinga vegetation--a dry forest to scrub vegetation that covers ca. 736,000 km2 of northeast Brazil. The study sit...

This paper explores the traffic, land use and welfare impacts of road pricing in the Austin region, introducing planned toll roads, implementing marginal cost pricing (MCP) on main roads, applying tolls to existing bridges, and instituting a downtown tolled cordon. Different toll scenarios are examined, including fixed versus variable tolling, and tolls based on time of day, traffic, and travel...