Abstract
Storms constitute one of the major natural disturbances in Sweden and its associated damages appear to be in an upward trend during the last 35 years in Europe. In addition, storm damages are expected to increase in the future due to the shortening of the soil frost period during the winter caused by climate change. Here we present a new optimization model to be used in forest planning for decreasing the wind exposure for storms over time through the minimization of vulnerable edges between neighbouring stands in a forest property. Three different cases were investigated where height differences of 5, 10 and 15 m between neighbouring stands were used to identify vulnerable edges in the property. The model, which accounts for the higher sensitivity of spruce compared to other tree species, was formulated as a mixed integer programming problem and solved using a branch and bound algorithm in a case study for a forest property in southern Sweden. In the case study, we investigated the trade-off between minimizing the length of vulnerable stand edges and the net present value from wood production. Our results show that it is possible to decrease vulnerable edge length with relatively moderate declines in the maximum achievable net present value, resulting in a clustering of dominant heights of neighbouring stands. Larger decreases in vulnerable edge length led to larger decreases in net present value, and an increased area proportion of forest older than 80 years. This model can easily be adapted to other planning problems in which edge effects are important.
Highlights
Forests are subject to a wide range of natural disturbances over their lifetime
A decrease of 1% of the NPV demand from the maximum NPV resulted in a decrease of 31, 41 and 56% for d cases 5, 10 and 15, respectively
A decrease of 5% in NPV demand resulted in a lowering of vulnerable edge length (VEL) by 46, 62, and 79% for d values of 5, 10 and 15
Summary
In Europe, natural disturbances have accounted for large eco nomic losses during the last 150 years (Schelhaas et al, 2003). Storms alone were responsible for half of this damage, resulting in approxi mately 17.5 million m3 of annual timber losses (Schelhaas et al, 2003), with an upward trend during the last 35 years in Europe (Senf & Seidl 2021). In Sweden, storms have harmed more than 100 million m3 of timber during the last century (Nilsson et al, 2004). In 2005, 75 million m3 were felled by only one storm in southern Sweden (Holmberg, 2005). The damage caused by storms is expected to increase in the future due to global warming and the shortening of the soil frost period during the winter because of warmer temperatures (Schlyter et al 2006; Lindner et al 2010; Gregow et al 2011)
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