Spatially Referenced Decision Analysis of Long-Term Forest Management Scenarios in Southwestern Finland

Abstract

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) of regional level long-term forest management scenarios was conducted by applying spatially explicit information to examine the trade-offs between ecological, economic and social impacts. Interval scale judgements were applied to mapped and numerical information jointly, while assessing the performance of alternative scenarios. The experts relied mostly on the numerical information, with which they might have been more confident and familiar. The weight elicitation was based on SMART using Swings (SMARTS) and SMART Exploiting Ranks (SMARTER). SMARTS resulted in two scenarios being quite equal either due to experts truly considering them equally important or being unconfident to express their weights applying SMARTS. SMARTER was considered more understandable, but lead to total utilities having wider range. However, impact information had a greater effect on the overall utility than the weighting. Future insights include use of dynamic approach, considering the issue more from ecosystem services point of view and tighter integration of participatory MCDA and geographic information systems (GIS).