Suitability Evaluation and Dominant Function Model for Multifunctional Forest Management

Abstract

Multifunctional forest management is a common topic and hotspot of forestry research in recent years. Evaluating the suitability of forest land for multifunctional management is the first and most important step for realizing sustainable and multifunctional forest management. This research aims to explore the suitability and forest dominant function evaluation model for multifunctional forestry management in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. Using the model proposed in the paper, we expect to provide decision-making information for forest multifunctional management. The study incorporated the distance of the ridge lines extracted by the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data into the evaluation index, and established the ecological status index (IE) and the forest productivity index (IF). Moreover, a nonlinear multifunctional site quality evaluation model (MSQEM) was constructed to evaluate the suitability of multifunctional forest management. A multifunctional management dominant function orientation model (MDFOM) was constructed by Principal Component Analysis, and divided each subcompartment into one of the four resource subgroups, such as timber production function, water conservation function, water and soil conservation function, and other functions. The MDFOM model was used for Rongshui County’s forest resource by 11 factors, which were selected because of their easy availability. The factors contain slope, soil thickness, altitude, average age, etc. The results showed that the number of small classes with multifunctional site index larger than 0.5 was 20,841 (56.87%), and the multifunctional suitable area was in clustered distribution, which was consistent with the reality. The result of subcompartment dominant function evaluated by MDFOM was compared with the planning forest species, the overall accuracy was 61%, and the accuracy rate of timber production function was 94.2%. The number of subcompartments with good and above multifunctional management status was 9174 (44.20%), with an area of 48,963.41 hm2 (51.24%). The multifunctional management status of subcompartments in the study area is at the middle and lower level. Thus, it is urgent to further improve the multi-functional management level of each subcompartment in this area and formulate scientific reasonable and multifunctional forestation measures.