Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research 3(3), pp. 21-29, 2014 Journal Homepage: www.cjasr.com ISSN: 2251-9114 Technical Parameters of Forest Roads Comparing with Standards in Zagros Vegetative Zone Seyed Ata ollah Hosseini * 1 Department of Forestry and Forest Economics, University of Tehran, Iran In noncommercial forests of Zagros, The roads are built to connect settlements or perform structural projects such as electrification, water and dam and etc. In this study, road density of Bidleh-Chigoo region in Lordegan city of Chahar mahal and Bakhtiari province, as well as a 5 kilometer segment in Dare Garm was technically evaluated. Technical parameters such as roadbed, and widths of cut and fill slopes, cross slope and longitudinal slope was measured by meter and suunto. Moreover the landslide position was recorded with GPS. Results showed that the road density in this region was 3.5 meter per hectare. So, accessibility to most regions was impossible. The longitudinal gradient of road in Dare Garm had statistically significant difference with standard of secondary roads at probability level of 99 percentages. Landslide had occurred in 21 percentage of surveyed road. Moreover, there was a relationship of y = -0.085x + 16.07 between the hillside gradient and width of cut and fill slopes (R2 = 0.08). Also, there was a relationship of y = -0.034x + 8.134 between the hillside gradient and longitudinal gradient of road (R2 = 0.006). Both equations had low regression coefficients which indicated that there wasn’t a relationship between the hillside gradients and technical parameters of forest roads. © 2014 Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research. All rights reserved. Keywords: Forest Road; Longitudinal gradient; Road density; Cut and fillslope; Zagros * Corresponding address: Department of Forestry, Faculty of Natural Resources, Sari Agricultural and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran E-mail address: at.hosseini@ut.ac.ir (Seyed Ata ollah Hosseini) © 2014 Caspian Journal of Applied Sciences Research; www.cjasr.com. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Roads are necessary to facilitate managing and protecting forests resources (Roger, 1998) and are suitable tool to develop protecting, harvesting, silvicultural, management and research plans (Amiri, 2000). The construction cost of roads in forestry plans in north of Iran are provided through forests incomes (Abdullahpour and Asadi, 2001) but road construction in other forest regions of Iran are expensive and it hasn’t any income. So, in these areas roads are constructed to access projects such as convection, water pumping and connection to villages (Hosseini-S and Hosseini, 2012, Nekoei et al, 2006). The main objectives of road construction at the west of Iran are forest conservation and socio-economic development. Therefore attention to technical standards is planning and construction stage lead to sustainable development of region (Sarikhani and Majnonian, 1994). Studies in Zagros showed that there is no forest engineering criterions in planning and building of forest roads. Researches indicated that in west forests 848.85 m2 and 276.86m2 of forest are respectively damaged during the construction of each 20 meters of main and secondary forest roads (Nekoei et al, 2006). There is no specific definition about the standard density of forest roads in non-commercial forest such as Zagros vegetative zone, because the conservation aims is most important in such areas. It seems that the existence standards about commercial forests can be used in these forests,