Introduction of sustainable management tools in central Zagros forests of Iran

Zagros forests are one of the vegetative regions which have been located in the west of Iran. The investigation of sustainable forest management in Zagros is one of the key issues which make us to consider the challenges concerned with the protection of forest resources and socioeconomic problems of local people. Demand for criteria evaluation and indicators for sustainable forest management from local to national level to conduct administrative affairs have been increased. The aim of the present study is to evaluate 7 criteria and 65 sustainable indicators which have been utilized in the Near East. Accordingly, a questionnaire, with its reliability confirmed by experts, was distributed among involved participants. The results indicated that the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the questionnaire was 0/729. Then, using DEMATEL model, the sustainability criteria were prioritized and the significant correlation among them determined. Likert scale was also utilized to rank all the indicators, and in terms of their relative weight they were compared with. The result indicated that the most significant criteria were legal, political, and institutional frameworks, and protective functions of forest criterion were the most influential factor. By analyzing the experts' attitudes, reliance on natural regeneration indicator with the relative weight of 31/15% was the most significant criteria in the region. The existence of number of seed provenance with the relative weight of 9/17% was the least significant role. At the end, 27 verifiers, 25 threshold values, and the most significant indicators in this research were determined.