E-Book Overview
The goal of Kangas, Kangas and Kurttila's Decision Support for Forest Management is to provide students and researchers with a toolbox of methods for approaching the different planning situations that may arise in practice. It draws together a wide range of methods used in planning forest management regimes and presents a systematic overview of current methodological approaches. While earlier books concerning forest planning have tended to focus on linear programming, economic aspects, or specific multi-criteria decision aid tools, this book provides a much broader range of tools to meet a variety of planning situations. The methods themselves cover a range of decision situations – from cases involving single decision makers, through group decision making, to participatory planning. They include traditional decision support tools, from optimization to utility functions, as well as methods that are just gaining ground in forest planning – such as problem structuring methods and social choice theory. Including examples which illustrate the application of each technique to specific management planning problems, the book offers an invaluable resource for both researchers and advanced students specializing in management and planning issues relating to forestry.
E-Book Content
Decision Support for Forest Management Managing Forest Ecosystems Volume 16 Series Editors: Klaus Gadow Georg-August-University, G¨ottingen, Germany Timo Pukkala University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland and Margarida Tom´e Instituto Superior de Agronom´ıa, Lisbon, Portugal Aims & Scope: Well-managed forests and woodlands are a renewable resource, producing essential raw material with minimum waste and energy use. Rich in habitat and species diversity, forests may contribute to increased ecosystem stability. They can absorb the effects of unwanted deposition and other disturbances and protect neighbouring ecosystems by maintaining stable nutrient and energy cycles and by preventing soil degradation and erosion. They provide much-needed recreation and their continued existence contributes to stabilizing rural communities. Forests are managed for timber production and species, habitat and process conservation. A subtle shift from multiple-use management to ecosystems management is being observed and the new ecological perspective of multi-functional forest management is based on the principles of ecosystem diversity, stability and elasticity, and the dynamic equilibrium of primary and secondary production. Making full use of new technology is one of the challenges facing forest management today. Resource information must be obtained with a limited budget. This requires better timing of resource assessment activities and improved use of multiple data sources. Sound ecosystems management, like any other management activity, relies on effective forecasting and operational control. The aim of the book series Managing Forest Ecosystems is to present state-of-the-art research results relating to the practice of forest management. Contributions are solicited from prominent authors. Each reference book, monograph or proceedings volume will be focused to deal with a specific context. Typical issues of the series are: resource assessment techniques, evaluating sustainability for even-aged and uneven-aged forests, multi-objective management, predicting forest development, optimizing forest management, biodiversity management and monitoring, risk assessment and economic analysis. The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. Annika Kangas, Jyrki Kangas and Mikko Kurttila Decision Support for Forest Management 123 Annika Kangas University of Helsinki, Finland Jyrki Kangas Mets¨ahallitus, Vantaa, Finland Mikko Kurttila University of Joensu