Dividing the Topographical Advantage of Forestland by Spatial Analysis and the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The topographical advantage is the contribution of topographic and traffic conditions to the operational efficiency such as afforestation, cutting, logging, and transportation of forestland. The classification of topographical advantage is of great importance to evaluate the costs of afforestation and cutting. In this paper, slope, distance, and elevation were selected as three main factors influencing the topographical advantage of forestland according to the Expert Scoring method. The Analytic Hierarchy Process was used to determine the weight of each factor, and ArcGIS10.2 software was used for spatial analysis of terrain and traffic data. The topographical advantage was then divided by the equal-difference method. We applied this method to Lingnan forest farm in Xiuning County, China. Results showed that it was difficult for afforestation and cutting in Lingnan forest farm. This paper presents a quantitative method combining spatial analysis and the Analytic Hierarchy Process for the topographical advantage, which will provide a scientific basis for the cost-effective accounting of afforestation.