Locational issues in forest management

Modeling to support forest management is a complex task. In the public sector, agencies such as the US Forest Service manage milions of acres of land. In the private sector, large forest product companies also own and manage millions of acres. Many countries, like Ireland and Finland, utilize large-scale models to optimize the present value of forest activities and outputs. Forest planning can be viewed as a multi-level management problem. The highest or strategic level involves identifying feasible outputs and goals for long-term operations over decades. The middle or tactical level of analysis is associated with determining specific levels of activities on large tracts of land. At the lowest or operational level, specific stands of timber are slated for harvesting, roads are scheduled to be built or improved, and harvesting systems are designed to minimize the cost of extracting trees across the terrain. Each level of analysis often involves numerous locational decisions. Our objective is to provide a review of forest modeling that highlights many of the locational issues found in forest management.