Optimal Management of Naturally Regenerating Uneven-aged Forests
Abstract
A shift from even-aged forest management to uneven-aged management practices leads to a problem rather different from the existing straightforward practice that follows a rotation cycle of artificial regeneration, thinning of inferior trees and a clearcut. A lack of realistic models and methods suggesting how to manage uneven-aged stands in a way that is economically viable and ecologically sustainable creates difficulties in adopting this new management practice. To tackle this problem, we make a two-fold contribution in this paper. The first contribution is the proposal of an algorithm that is able to handle a realistic uneven-aged stand management model that is otherwise computationally tedious and intractable. The model considered in this paper is an empirically estimated size-structured ecological model for uneven-aged spruce forests. The second contribution is on the sensitivity analysis of the forest model with respect to a number of important parameters. The analysis provides us an insight into the behavior of the uneven-aged forest model.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1608.05109,
title = {Optimal Management of Naturally Regenerating Uneven-aged Forests},
author = {Ankur Sinha and Janne Rämö and Pekka Malo and Markku Kallio and Olli Tahvonen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.05109},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
29 pages, 11 tables and 13 figures