Long-term forest management planning often involves several stakeholders with conflicting objectives, creating a complex decision process. Multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) presents a promising framework for finding solutions in terms of suitable trade-offs among the objectives. However, many of the MCDA methods that have been implemented in forest management planning can only be used to compare and evaluate a limited number of management plans, which increases the risk that the most suitable plan is not included in the decision process. The aim of this study is to test whether the combination of two MCDA methods can facilitate the evaluation of a large number of strategic forest management plans in a situation with multiple objectives and several stakeholders. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to set weights for objectives based on stakeholder preferences and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used to produce an overall ranking of alternatives. This approach was applied to a case study of the Vilhelmina municipality, northern Sweden. The results show that the combination of AHP and TOPSIS is easy to implement in participatory forest planning and takes advantage of the capacity of forest decision support systems to create a wide array of management plans. This increases the possibility that the most suitable plan for all stakeholders will be identified.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.