Abstract. Zagros vegetation region is located in the west and southwest of the country of Iran. Nowadays, these forests are in severe quantitative and qualitative environmental dangers due to various climatic reasons, uncontrolled exploitation, overgrazing of livestock and lack of knowledge about management requirements and have become seriously affected. In the last 6 years, there have been numerous reports about the decline of oak trees in the central and southern Zagros forests. In this research was evaluated existing policies in decline crisis of Zagros forest of Iran with game theory. The research process has been conducted in several sections. In the first section of the research, key players of the decline crisis game in Zagros forests were examined, in order to evaluate strategies for crisis. In the second section of the research, the main strategies of the key players in decline crisis management were determined. Thereafter, the benefits of different strategies for key players were quantitatively evaluated with game theory. The result shows that it is clear from the diagram of the evaluation result of players in crisis game in Zagros forests that mode of results is in the executive management and local people of Zagros forests. Executive management has been having protection of forest resources and rainfall saving strategies. In reaction, local people has been having corporation and lack of corporation strategies. It can be extracted from the game theory model in this research that the game has 2 Nash Equilibriums (NE) in combination of protection of forest resources with lack of corporation of the people and combination of saving rainfall with corporation of the people. Based on the results there is no useful role for rainfall saving in Zagros forest of Iran. The way out of this impasse is to design appropriate policies in Zagros forests for the balance of rainfall saving and protection of forest resources, in a way that it follows the local community cooperation.

Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) means management of forest resources that consideration the needs of the current generation without risking ability of future generations to attain their needs. Evaluation of SFM needs to design a feedback information system to monitoring of forest resources. In this research, sustainability indicators based on the SMART&D framework were prepared in Tange-Solak local area in Zagros forest, Iran. Based on this, 7 indicators of ecosystem features were provided for evaluation of SFM. Here, Sustainability Index (SI) was used in evaluating SFM via fuzzy membership function. The results reveal that, Forest SI was eventually obtained as 0.15. This number (0.15) was obtained from the Fuzzy approach used in this study for an SI value far lower for forest sustainability compared to the number 1 (maximum value).© JASEM https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v21i5.3

In Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) combined evaluation of natural and social functions will do for protection of forest system. SFM implies management of forest resources without risking ability of future generations to meet their needs. Zagros forest in Iran, is considered as one of the largest habitats of plants in Iran. In this research, 7 sustainability indicators were prepared by the analyst team to evaluate SFM in Tange-Solak local area in Zagros forest. Then the main strategies of the key players in decline crisis management were determined based on collecting resources, documentary research and interviews with a team of Zagros forestry experts and the using of DPSIR framework (the model of Driving forces, Pressure, States, Impacts and Responses). Result of DPSIR framework shows that loss of knowledge of local communities traditional knowledge, not motivation in rural living in villages, inappropriate decision-makings for local residents and the lack of specialized work are the main forces related to Zagros forestry in forest decline.

The present study adopts a game theory approach analyzing land-use planning in Zagros forests, Iran. A Static Game of Incomplete Information (SGII) was applied to the evaluation of participatory forest management in the study area. This tool allows a complete assessment of sustainable forest planning producing two modeling scenarios based on (i) high and (ii) low social acceptance. According to the SGII results, the Nash Bayesian Equilibrium (NBE) strategy suggests the importance of landscape protection in forest management. The results of the NBE analytical strategy show that landscape protection with barbed wires is the most used strategy in local forest management. The response to the local community includes cooperation in conditions of high social acceptance and noncooperation in conditions of low social acceptance. Overall, social acceptance is an adaptive goal in forest management plans.

Oak decline has been observed periodically in the different parts of the world. We conducted this study to evaluate the project control in this phenomenon. In this paper, the project control methods have proposed to be useful tools to deal with oak decline. The aim of the study is twofold: (i) define and schedule a set of activities and determine times for those activities in the Control of Forest Decline Project (CFDP) using the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) method; (ii) apply the Critical Path Method (CPM) within the context on how to reduce the project time by increasing operating costs and crashing the activities. In crisis management, “golden time” is defined for doing activities and controlling the crisis, which has a greater role than other times. The analysis confirmed that the problem of forest decline is an ecological problem and its root lies in participatory management with the local community. We also found that the time crashing is not economically efficient to the CFDP except for two activities: public information and stakeholder analysis.