No abstract

Forest management situations are intrinsically challenging due to the nature of being an interconnected and multi-faceted problem. Integrating ecological, social, and economic objectives is one of the biggest hurdles for forest planners. Often, decisions made with the interest of producing a specific ecosystem service may affect the production of other forest ecosystem services. We present a forest management scheduling model that involves multiple ownerships and addresses the joint production of two ecosystem services: timber and upland hardwood old forest. We use a marginal value approach to evaluate old forest. We analyze the impacts of considering different management options, shapes and levels of marginal value functions for old forest, and potential benefits of rewarding the major forest land ownership groups to produce old forest. Results show the downward-sloping marginal value function as a compromise strategy and the benefits of applying it over approaches using either fixed values or targets for addressing ecosystem services. A decomposition model was useful for recognizing important stand-level detail. A broad landscape and multiple ownership approach helped identify interconnections between forest cover types and between landowner groups.

Many of the intrinsic facets of forest planning are surrounded by uncertainty. Decision makers strive to improve their understanding of the sources of uncertainty and their impact on the decision-making process. However, uncertainty is rarely integrated into real-world forestry applications or into decision support tools used in forest planning problems. To identify the needs, interests, and challenges of managing uncertainty in forest planning, we interviewed forestry professionals. All the interviewees indicated the positive potential of a tool that could address some facets of uncertainty. Additionally, we conducted a review of the most recent literature on this topic to understand current hot topics and future trends that could help address real-world challenges. This study highlights the next steps to incorporate uncertainty into the decision support systems for forest planning. However, to strengthen the bond between the practical needs of forestry professionals and the theoretical approaches proposed by recent literature, more effort should be placed on defining terminology and formulating a theoretical framework for uncertainty analysis. This will provide the forestry community with a common language and typology, help increase its general understanding, and improve communication between forestry researchers, forestry professionals, and other stakeholders.