Stand-Level Forest Management Planning Approaches

Abstract

Seeking an optimal operational regime under different management environments has been one of the main concerns of forest managers. Traditionally, the main operational regime includes planting density or regeneration scheme, thinning time/intensity, and optimal time to harvest over the given time horizon. Deterministic approaches to tackle this type of optimization problem with different controls have dominated the solution techniques in forestry literature. We present in this paper an overview of the methodologies used in stand-level optimization, in which we show the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies as well as provide comments on the effectiveness of the methodology. We then propose a new dynamic programing approach for generalizing solution specification and techniques.

A critical survey of optimization methods in industrial forest plantations management

“…It is no coincidence that biodiversity has appeared as an objective, as is shown in Figure 2, in a manner parallel to the expansion in the use of MH and MCDM techniques. As stated by Yoshimoto et al (2016), the employment of MH was accentuated when spatial aspects appeared. It should be emphasized that, as shown in Appendix 1, spatial constraints are used reasonably frequently.…”

“…Thus, the classic optimization group is the one least used, and as for those most employed, the favorite is SA, followed by integer linear programming (ILP). Yoshimoto et al (2016) analyzed forest management optimization methods differentiating stand, forest and landscape levels using a database of 85 papers. In the results at the stand level, MH methods predominated, whereas at the forest level MIP and LP were the most prominent.…”

“…Thus, several authors suggest suitable aggregation of the preferences of the different stakeholders in management models for these types of plantations, since these preferences clearly affect the final results obtained (DiazBalteiro et al, 2016a). Finally, it is interesting to note that very few studies in this field incorporate uncertainty or risk elements into the analysis (Yoshimoto et al, 2016). The consideration of biodiversity management as an objective could have obvious implications in aspects like the cutting areas, the forest rotation length employed, silviculture, etc.…”

“…Finally, due to length constraints, we decided not to incorporate an explanation about the main features of the different optimization methods used in the field surveyed. Readers can find a description of these methods in other studies such as Diaz-Balteiro and Romero (2008), Kangas et al (2015); Yoshimoto et al (2016); Ezquerro et al (2016).…”

“…Starting from the basis that, in the literature, different optimization methods have frequently been used to address different forest management problems (Weintraub and Bare, 1996;Kaya et al, 2016;Yoshimoto et al, 2016), the temporal aspect of applying these techniques in industrial forest plantations was analyzed. When considering different planning times, the classic definitions of strategic, tactical and operational levels were taken into account (McDill, 2014;Borges et al, 2014b), bearing in mind that they are usually organized hierarchically (Banhara et al, 2010).…”