Management of the risk of wind damage in forestry: a graph-based Markov decision process approach

Forsell, Nicklas; Wikström, Peder; Garçia, Frédérick; Sabbadin, Régis; Blennow, Kristina; Eriksson, Ljusk Ola

doi:10.1007/s10479-009-0522-7

Cited by 24 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…This adds to the observation above, i.e., the need to use more advanced methods that explicitly handle stochasticity seems to be limited. This conclusion is in agreement with findings by Valsta (1992), Pasalodos-Tato et al (2010), andForsell et al (2009) that overall changes in optimum rotations due to growth risks, risks of fire, and risks of wind throw, respectively, are small. However, Spring et al (2005) reached a different conclusion.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Forest management planning problems under risk can be solved by assuming that decision-makers adapt their behavior over time as new information about the current state of the forest ecosystem and the economic context is acquired (Lohmander 2000;Eriksson 2006;Forsell et al 2009). However, these kinds of optimization problems are notoriously difficult to solve, especially in cases such as this, involving application of a stand simulator with an inner structure that cannot be exploited by the solution procedure, i.e., the simulator is too complex to be explicitly represented in the optimization problem.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, two studies of sources of risk that are indirectly related to climate change found variations in test scenarios to have limited effects on the economically optimal management regime. Pasalodos-Tato et al (2010) found that variations in forest fire frequency and extent had limited effects on optimal rotation lengths, and Forsell et al (2009) found that management prescriptions for stands at risk of wind throw developed with a deterministic model were as good as those developed with a stochastic model, albeit for a few stands. The management implications of the risks associated with effects of climate change uncertainty on growth and yield have not been previously studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Implications of growth uncertainties associated with climate change for stand management

Eriksson¹,

Backéus²,

Garçia³

2011

Eur J Forest Res

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Climate change is expected to have substantial effects on many aspects of forest ecosystems, including timber production. Temperatures in northern Europe are expected to increase considerably, although there is substantial uncertainty about both the seasonal and average changes that will occur. In Scandinavia, production is predicted to increase across most of the area covered by boreal forest, since the growth of trees in the region is currently limited by temperature. Therefore, we have analyzed the importance of adapting management practices to future climate changes and considered possible ways to address associated stand management problems. For this purpose, we simulated climate scenarios with temperature increases ranging from 2.5 to 6.0°C over a 100-year period, and effects on typical Swedish stands with several species, then optimized their management with simulated annealing. The results indicate that the maximum considered temperature trend would raise the economic value of the stands by almost 5% more than the minimum trend. However, the importance of optimizing management plans in accordance with the correct temperature scenario appears to be limited. The plan optimized for the minimum temperature trend was only marginally inferior to the plan optimized for the maximum temperature trend in the maximum trend scenario, and vice versa. It also seemed adequate to use a deterministic formulation of the problem, and in cases where a stochastic climate change model generated more robust plans, the advantage could be attributed to model artifacts rather than climate change per se.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Implications of growth uncertainties associated with climate change for stand management

Eriksson¹,

Backéus²,

Garçia³

2011

Eur J Forest Res

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“…As well as on the stand level case, Markov decision processes have also been employed to deal with uncertainty at the forest level (Sallnäs and Eriksson, 1989;Buongiorno, 2001). Forsell et al (2011) included the risk of wind damage in long-term forestry management with the object of maximizing the expected net present value of the forest accounting for the spatial relationships of the stands. Other Markov decision process applications at forest level have dealt with climate change , reserve site selection (Sabbadin et al, 2007), risk of forest fire Garcia and Sabbadin, 2001), maintenance of wildlife (Spring et al, 2008) and wind effects (Forsell et al, 2011).…”

Section: Lp Ip and Heuristics Techniques + Stochasticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Review. Assessing uncertainty and risk in forest planning and decision support systems: review of classical methods and introduction of new approaches

Pasalodos-Tato

Mäkinen²,

García-Gonzalo³

et al. 2013

For. syst.

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Aim: Since forest planning is characterized by long time horizon and it typically involves large areas of land and numerous stakeholders, uncertainty and risk should play an important role when developing forest management plans. The aim of this study is to review different methods to deal with risk and uncertainty in forest planning, listing problems that forest managers may face during the preparation of management plans and trying to give recommendations in regard to the application of each method according to the problem case. The inclusion of risk and uncertainty in decision support systems is also analyzed.Area: It covers the temporal and spatial scale of forest planning, the spatial context, the participation process, the objectives dimensions and the good and services addressed.Material and methods: Several hundreds of articles dealing with uncertainty and risk were identified regarding different forestry-related topics and approaches. Form them, around 170 articles were further reviewed, categorized and evaluated.Main results: The study presents a thorough review and classification of methods and approaches to consider risk and uncertainty in forest planning. Moreover, new approaches are introduced, showing the opportunities that their application present in forest planning.Research highlights: The study can aid forest managers in the decision making process when designing a forest management plan considering risk and uncertainty.Keywords: operations research; optimal alternative; stochastic risk; endogenous risk; stand level; forest level.

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“…Chance-constrained programming has been used to assess uncertainty in timber yields (Weintraub and Vera 1991;Weintraub and Abramovich 1995;Hof et al 1996) and production demands (Hof and Pickens 1991). Wind damage and spatial structure of stands are taken into account by employing probabilistic models (Meilby et al 2001) and Markov decision process (Forsell et al 2011). They also demonstrate that the expected net present value of stands would significantly increase if accounting for the risk of wind damage (Forsell et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial uncertainty in harvest scheduling

Wei

Murray

2012

Ann Oper Res

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Forest harvest scheduling is a complicated management exercise because of the diverse and competing uses of forest resources, such as economic productivity, recreation and flora and fauna sustainability. In an effort to ensure the long-term viability of forest resources, restrictions are typically placed on the size of harvest areas, green-up intervals and proximity between disturbed areas in the United States. In order to satisfy consumer demands and maintain spatial and temporal restrictions, forest planners rely widely on optimization models to develop harvest schedules. A problematic element of work to date, however, is that spatial information relied upon in such analysis is typically uncertain in many ways, particularly spatial location and harvest unit boundaries. This paper develops new optimization models that explicitly account for spatial uncertainty in harvest scheduling. Application results demonstrate the effectiveness of this new perspective, enabling potential spatial uncertainty impacts to be better understood in management planning.

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Management of the risk of wind damage in forestry: a graph-based Markov decision process approach

Cited by 24 publications

References 15 publications

Implications of growth uncertainties associated with climate change for stand management

Implications of growth uncertainties associated with climate change for stand management

Review. Assessing uncertainty and risk in forest planning and decision support systems: review of classical methods and introduction of new approaches

Spatial uncertainty in harvest scheduling

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