A mathematical model to achieve sustainable forest management

Abstract

Forest resources are important natural resources for all living beings but they are continuously depleting due to overgrowth of human population and their development activities. Therefore, conservation of forest resources is an important problem for sustainable development. In view of this, in this paper, we have proposed and analyzed a nonlinear mathematical model to study the effects of economic and technological efforts on the conservation of forest resources. In the modeling process, it is assumed that due to increase in population size, the demand of population (population pressure) for forest products, lands, etc., increases and to reduce this population pressure, economic efforts are employed proportional to the population pressure. Further, it is assumed that technological efforts in the form of genetically engineered plants are applied proportional to the depleted level of forest resources to conserve them. Model analysis reveals that increase in economic and technological efforts increases the density of forest resources but further increase in these efforts destabilizes the system. Numerical simulation is carried out to verify analytical findings and explore the effect of different parameters on the dynamics of model system.