The development and application of a decision support system for sustainable forest management on the Boreal Plain

Abstract

Millar Western Forest Products Ltd. manages a forest in west-central Alberta under a Forest Management Agreement (FMA) with the Government of Alberta. Part of Millar Western's planning process brought researchers together to develop a decision support system (DSS) for forest management planning and monitoring programs. Four modules — timber supply, biodiversity, FIRE, and WATER — were built to evaluate, with the help of indicators of sustainable forest management, current and future forest conditions predicted from computer simulations of alternative management scenarios. In the first round of assessment four management scenarios, distinct by their level of silviculture intensification and by the spatial clearcut layout pattern, were compared. Such comparison has demonstrated that (1) the current forest management scenario improved moose habitat at the expense of timber supply, (2) all scenarios had similar fire risk, (3) generated increases in peak flow and water yield of selected watersheds, and (4) slightly impoverished forest biodiversity. All scenarios were examined in light of a computer-simulated natural disturbance benchmark. This led to landscape design scenarios to reduce fire risk and balance biodiversity indicators with timber supply objectives, one of which was eventually selected for implementation. The company's monitoring and research program is also highly focused on improving DSS modules and the underlying data, hence its association with the Forest Watershed and Riparian Disturbance (FORWARD) project, which considers the effects of forest management on aquatic ecosystem indicators. Key words: decision support system, ecosystem management, forest management, natural disturbance, indicators, sustainable forest management, adaptive management.

The use of the natural range of variability for identifying biodiversity values at risk when implementing a forest management strategy

“…The meta-modelling framework we have assembled for this project brings together a spatial harvest scheduler with a heuristic optimization engine (Patchworks, Spatial Planning Systems 2006;see Gooding et al 2008 for a more detailed description of its use), a fire and succession landscape simulator (see Yamasaki et al (2008) for a more detailed description of its use), and a toolbox of biodiversity indicator models (Doyon andDuinker 2003, Van Damme et al 2003) (Fig. 1).…”

“…The Biodiversity Assessment Project (BAP) toolbox , Messier et al 2003, Van Damme et al 2003) is composed of several indicator models that encompass several dimensions of biodiversity, including landscape configuration, ecosystem diversity, special habitat elements and species-specific habitat supply. Many of them can be directly associated with the VOITs of the planning standards.…”

“…Such an approach stressed the importance of mimicking or emulating the natural disturbance regime (Angelstam 1998) and the use of indicators of pattern (and sometimes process) to monitor critical forest conditions in order to maintain them within a range that is representative of the natural state and that will ensure ecological integrity. Extending the use of indicators into the realm of planning with indicators models has been a logical step for assessing alternative management strategies in terms of biodiversity values under the principle of the NRV (Doyon andDuinker 2003, Van Damme et al 2003).…”

Achieving forest biodiversity outcomes across scales, jurisdictions and sectors with cycles of adaptive management integrated through criteria and indicators

“…The Millar Western Forest Products Ltd. initiative to implement a passive adaptive management framework within their operations near Whitecourt, Alberta, led to the development of the Biodiversity Assessment Project (BAP) as a component of the company's decision support system (Van Damme et al 2003). A distinctive part of the BAP approach is the adaptive planning stage, whereby a suite of dynamic models is used to simulate future forest conditions, providing an analytical tool for the assessment of alternative management strategies prior to their implementation (Doyon 2003).…”

Monitoring and Understanding Mammal Assemblages: Experiences From Bending Lake, Fallingsnow, and Tom Hill

“…Adjustment to thinning operations, such as changes to pre-brushing, is easily implemented. As a good platform to examine future decision-making, we recommend models of the changes in landscape-and stand-level habitat supply following commercial thinning, a practice in modelling that Millar Western Forest Products committed to several years ago (Van Damme et al 2003). Post-treatment vegetation dynamics at the Tom Hill study continue to be monitored in permanent sample plots within thinned stands, thereby providing the data needed to support and refine habitat supply models.…”