Investigation of the variables effects on fuelwood consumption as an energy source in forest villages of Turkey

It is a fact that the existing forests of Turkey have been insufficient, both in quality and quantity. The people living in and around the state forests in Turkey have been illegally using the wood raw material as fuelwood because of social, economic and geographic problems. As a result of this process, the state forests in Turkey cannot realize their social and economic functions. The main objective of this research is to define the social, economic, cultural and geographic factors effects on fuelwood consumption. The Macka State Forest Enterprise with 70 villages was chosen as the research area. In order to perform this study, the face to face question method and statistical tests were used. This research showed that there was a statistically positive relation between the fuelwood consumption and the altitudes of villages, the distances between forest and town center, the number of wooden houses and cows, whereas a statistically negative relation was shown between the fuelwood consumption and the amounts of liquid gas consumption, the numbers of new houses, the distances between forest and villages and the unit forest area per person. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.