A target-oriented approach to forest ecosystem design – changing the rules of forest planning

This paper introduces several concepts which underlie the development of a spatially and temporally explicit forest ecosystem design model, forest simulation optimization system (FSOS). These concepts include: (1) two common landscape indicators – patch size and age class distributions – to quantify non-timber resource objectives; (2) dynamic cut block and patch building; (3) the integration of short- and long-term planning; and (4) target-oriented, adaptive forest ecosystem planning. FSOS uses a simulated annealing algorithm and a resource weighting approach to schedule harvest units to achieve a desired forest ecosystem state. We tested FSOS successfully on the data set from an 80 000 ha Tree Farm Licence in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Results of this analysis demonstrate the ability of FSOS to gradually change the landscape based on a desired future condition and differing resource priority schemes.