Spatial Optimisation in Forest Planning

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in considering goals other than timber production in forest planning. Common to many of these new goals is that there are spatial requirements. Unfortunately, existing approaches for long-term forest planning are in general non-spatial, or are not effective in spatial considerations because of the complexity of solving spatial problems. These circumstances have spurred extensive research into spatial problem solving during the last years. However, much of the research has a focus on American conditions. Subsequently, a majority of the studies deal with the problem of not harvesting adjacent areas and only a small number of studies deal with problems more typical to, e.g., Scandinavian conditions, such as minimizing the fragmentation of old forest. In this chapter different aspects of spatial consideration will be discussed. Different ways of including spatial aspects in forest planning, and characteristics of spatial problems, will be presented. Further, a number of planning problems typical for a Scandinavian setting that encompass both spatial considerations in terms of creating connectivity in the landscape and also non-spatial considerations that normally are found in long term forest planning, will be presented.Keywordsconnectivity problemsharvest schedulinglandscape structurelinear programmingsimulated annealing.