Operational studies on solving the multifunctional forestry problems

Operational studies have been applied for over 30 years in solving forest planning issues. However, during that period, the nature of these issues has significantly evolved. The planning processes cover nearly all aspects of forestry, starting from forest regeneration through road system development, timber harvest and transport, conversion into assortments to timber processing. In each of these Gases, particular attention should be drawn to environmental (natural) and public (social) issues. Also market conditions and the goals individual forest holdings and enterprises strive to attain should be taken into consideration. Hence, the variety of the decision-making issues and the extent of the current planning tasks have significantly increased. The vast amount of available information has necessitated construction of larger models, while growth of forest function attractiveness has necessitated definition of a larger amount of restrictions in the form of edge and balance conditions, etc. of high complexity. Moreover, a large number and variety of forest functions is one of the reasons why no single, universal, commonly applied method has been developed so far. Development and improvement of the methods enabling shaping of an optimal structure of the forest functions is today the focus of specialists in many countries. The importance of operational studies in forestry has been acknowledged by awarding an Edelman Prize in 1998 for particular achievements in the area of innovative and practical applications. However, still there are many challenges as regards modelling of optimal solutions in forestry and modelling methodology. The aim of this paper is to present forest issues which are modelled and tackled through the application of operational studies. It is not possible to analyse all the applications in forestry. Nevertheless, the presented examples show the variety and complexity of the decision-making aspects in forestry.