Publications

This overview is an introduction to, and short discussions of, a selection of papers from the 2010 Workshop on Decision Support Systems in Sustainable Forest Management held in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 19-21, 2010. The papers from this workshop were selected as a result of collaboration between the conference organizers, its participants, and the editorial team of Mathematical and Computational Forestry & Natural-Resource Sciences. The collection of the articles that passed the peer-review process are presented in this Special Section on Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Forest Management, and are discussed by the Editorial Team that conducted the peer-review of this Special Section. © 2011 Publisher of the Mathematical and Computational Forestry & Natural-Resource Sciences.

There is a great diffusion of modern information systems in all areas of science. In the case of forestry, new information tools have emerged during the last 15 years which have helped to improve the work of foresters. Decision support systems (DSSs) are applications which are designed to help managers in the task of decision making, by accelerating the relevant decision-making processes, while simultaneously focusing on the conservation of natural, financial and human resources. In this paper, we describe the development of a DSS which has been designed to help managers in the process of decision making, in relation to areas that have been burnt by forest fires. In addition, the above system also provides the user with the capacity to create hypothetical (what-if) scenarios in order to achieve the best form of intervention. The relevant software was created using Visual C and the weights of the various parameters were calculated using multi-criteria decision analysis. © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The traditional forest management modes in China are rather lagged behind. Their digitalization level is relatively low, and their decision-making processes are somewhat subjective, without using explicit data and information. To integrate forest dynamics models into geographic information system to develop forest management decision support system could fully bring the visualization and spatial analysis technologies as well as the model simulation and prediction functions into play, and strengthen the capability of dealing with forest dynamic changes at large spatiotemporal scales. This paper designed and actualized forest growth model, landscape harvesting model, and matrix model, and developed a sustainable forest management decision support system to answer the questions "what, where, and how" in forest harvesting practices. The decision support system was applied in Lushuihe and Sanchazi forestry bureaus of Changbai Mountain area, which could provide broader implication for the digital technique applications in forest management in China.

Forest and conservation managers as decision-makers must deal with many competing criteria in order to find optimal solutions which best describe sustainable forest development. The aim of the study was to elaborate a framework for forest fragmentation-based forest administrative area ranking in order to support sustainable forest development. In this paper there is presented and discussed a two-stage multiple-criteria spatial decision-support system (MC-SDSS), employing it to locate a potential forest administrative area under different forest fragmentation conditions. Lithuanian state forest enterprises were selected as forest administrative areas and used as alternative options for ranking. Amount of forest areas, representing different forest fragmentation components (edge, perforated, undetermined, interior, patch, and transitional) in each state forest enterprise area, was taken as a criterion for alternative evaluation. Calculations of criterion significance were performed. Ranks for state forest enterprises were defined using technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and simple additive weighting (SAW) method. Results of this study suggest that forest fragmentation-based ranking of forest administrative regions is so important that it could potentially influence ecological processes during recurring forest development.

In the last 25 years there have been several efforts to create Decision Support Systems (DSS) for management of the forests in Mexico. Few references exists that document these experiences and that can assist in understanding their genesis, evolution, successes, shortcomings, or failures, as well as the factors that have led to these outcomes. This chapter fills this gap by presenting an overview of the DSS that have been created since the mid 1980's. The characteristics of the Mexican forest ecosystems and the complex web of interactions and co-evolution of the contexts that frame the forestry activities in Mexico have influenced the characteristics, evolution, and current state of the art of the DSS for the management of the forest in the country. Similar characteristics and contexts are commonly found in developing countries around the world. Hence, the experiences, lessons, and recommendations for future developments presented in this chapter can be of value beyond the specific conditions of the Mexican forestry sector. © 2010, IGI Global.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the different recently developed empirical and mechanistic modelling approaches for assessing the risk of wind and fire damage to forests. Additionally the work will explore possible ways to integrate these approaches, including feedback mechanisms, into growth and yield models and decision support tools used in forestry. The integration of mechanistic and empirical storm risk models, as well as an empirical/mechanistic fire risk model into growth simulators is demonstrated and future challenges and options for risk modelling and for creating complex decision support tools, including growth simulators, meteorological components and risk modules, are discussed.

In forest management there is a tendency towards measuring more cost-effective and simulating more. In this context the development of reliable, user friendly forest simulators has become economically relevant. The objective of this perspective paper is to highlight the recent trends in forest simulation and to identify the remaining challenges to make forest simulation a reliable tool for forest policy and management. Experiences with forest simulators for various purposes in different geographical contexts illustrate how the important challenges of forest decision support can be addressed through flexible customization for different end-user categories, offering spatially explicit approaches at the landscape scale, and integrating empirical and mechanistic models in hybrid and bayesian simulation approaches. Recent development trends in forest simulation for decision support are mainly related to the ever increasing calculation speed and capacity of computers, facilitating the development of robust tools with comfortable user interface and realistic functions and options. Another trend is the combination of simulation tools with optimization and choice algorithms fading away the difference between simulators and decision support systems. The remaining challenges are basically in the high expectations of stakeholders concerning the ability of simulators to predict a range of outcomes in terms of ecosystem services and sustainability indicators, as well as the quality of their outcome in terms of output credibility to stakeholders. Need for accepted and realistic model validation and verification methods preferably using empirical data is crucial in this matter.

The decision-making environment in forest management (FM) has changed drastically during the last decades. Forest management planning is facing increasing complexity due to a widening portfolio of forest goods and services, a societal demand for a rational, transparent decision process and rising uncertainties concerning future environmental conditions (e.g., climate change). Methodological responses to these challenges include an intensified use of ecosystem models to provide an enriched, quantitative information base for FM planning. Furthermore, multi-criteria methods are increasingly used to amalgamate information, preferences, expert judgments and value expressions, in support of the participatory and communicative dimensions of modern forestry. Although the potential of combining these two approaches has been demonstrated in a number of studies, methodological aspects in interfacing forest ecosystem models (FEM) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are scarcely addressed explicitly. In this contribution we review the state of the art in FEM and MCDA in the context of FM planning and highlight some of the crucial issues when combining ecosystem and preference modeling. We discuss issues and requirements in selecting approaches suitable for supporting FM planning problems from the growing body of FEM and MCDA concepts. We furthermore identify two major challenges in a harmonized application of FEM-MCDA: (i) the design and implementation of an indicator-based analysis framework capturing ecological and social aspects and their interactions relevant for the decision process, and (ii) holistic information management that supports consistent use of different information sources, provides meta-information as well as information on uncertainties throughout the planning process. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

The optimization of value chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since value chains are closely linked to the satisfaction of human needs and combine different driving forces for environmental change. This article presents a methodological approach for the participatory development of value-chain wide sustainability indicator sets and their integration into a decision support tool in the specific case study of the chain " construction and refurbishment with wood" There are numerous indicator sets for sustainable development of forests and sustainable forestry available at different levels, ranging from local, regional and national to global scale assessments. Some efforts were also made to integrate later production stages of forest value chains (such as wood processing) in the assessment scope (e.g. for chain-of-custody certification). However, no indicator set has so far been available covering environmental, social and economic aspects for the entire value chain of building with timber. This gap was closed through applied sustainability research in the project " Holzwende 2020: Sustainable future markets for wood in the building sector" © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

This study is designed to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) based contemporary forest management planning model (ETÇAPKlasik) enabling to embrace the features of forest management planning guidelines. The model is implemented at a forest management unit level for even-age, uneven-age and coppice forests. The model has four modules as Data Input with inventory compilation, Harvest Scheduler with classical approach and Data Output as reporting and mapping with GIS functionalities. The model has been successfully tested on a case study site in Kizilcasu planning unit in Turkey. The results showed that ETÇAPKlasik model easily compiled the sampling data from field inventory and mapped the results of plan (forest stratification, age class and site maps etc.). Harvest scheduling was conducted according to even-age and uneven-age planning methods. The outputs are generated according to the management guidelines. In conclusion, the model has contributed to the forest management process with the help of information technologies enabling the process to be faster, sound and timely using relatively less amount of time and labor. ETÇAKlasik has the potential for use in preparing contemporary forest management planning process.