Using a decision support system to study impacts of land use policies on wood procurement possibilities of the sawmill industry – A case study at regional and municipal levels

Abstract

The impacts of political decisions concerning land use constraints on potential raw material procurement of the saw mill industry in different operational environments were analysed in a case study at regional and municipal levels. In these analyses, qualitative scenarios about the future operational environment of the sawmill industry were integrated with quantitative and exploratory scenario modelling. First, existing qualitative scenarios and statistical data were utilized in the quantitative parameterization of the Finnish resource projection model, MELA. Thereafter, MELA was used for decision support for determining land use policy impacts. According to the MELA scenarios, the impact of existing administrative land use constraints on potential saw log removal was small at the regional level. However, at the municipal scale the impacts varied. The severity of the impacts depended on the targets set for the utilization of forest resources, proportion of areas having land use constraints from the total forest area, age and volume structure of the forests at the municipal level and length of planning period. Our experiment shows that MELA is applicable as a decision support system in forest land use planning. Further development is, however, needed to facilitate searching for land use regulation measures that minimize the negative effects of land use decisions on wood supply and to consider the importance of different sources of uncertainty.