Proximity to roads is also another factor that we considered. If our client doesn’t want to invest too much money in building new forest roads, then foresters would have to use existing forest roads that are easily accessible through trucks. The buffers are 500 meters and 1000 meters respectively because we think the 500 meters is a good distance for forestry machinery to operate from the edge of the road.

Here is what the buffers look like:

Map 7. Road buffer Zones

We set a area with in 500 meters from the road as most preferred area and gave it a weight 3. Area with in 500 to 1000 meters from road are weighted with 2. The rest area in the AOI has been given to weight 1 as they are far away from exist roads and would require higher travelling costs.