Incorporating average and maximum area restrictions in harvest scheduling models

A major goal in natural resource management has long been balancing the multiple uses of forest lands. Timber harvesting remains an important component of natural resource utilization, but must be approached in such a way that recreational use, ecosystem dynamics, species survivability, and other considerations are not sacrificed. One way in which production impacts are mitigated in forest management is by restricting the spatial extent of harvesting activities in developed plans. Through the use of harvest scheduling optimization models, constraints can be structured and imposed to limit local area disturbance associated with harvesting to a stipulated maximum. This represents an approach for regulating impacts in an economically driven management setting. Harvest scheduling research has recognized the challenges in appropriately structuring maximum area restrictions in optimization models, but regulating average disturbance area size may also be desired. This paper develops a model formulation for imposing average and maximum area limits on local impacts in harvest scheduling that can be solved using exact techniques. Application results are presented that highlight the feasibility of this approach. Further, the associated tradeoffs that exist in modelling both average and maximum area restrictions simultaneously are illustrated.