Recognizing Spatial Considerations in Forest Management Planning

Purpose of Review The aim is to help identify how spatial facets of forest management can be analyzed and better understood in strategic forest management planning. Focus is on stand-level spatial interdependencies potentially related to a wide range of considerations including wildlife habitat, invasive species, forest management regulations, and cost of harvest operations. Spatial facets addressed include adjacency and harvest area limitations, habitat connectivity, edge impacts, proximity considerations, and management options for restructuring stand shapes and sizes. Emphasis is on recent studies with direct connections to both forest management planning and problem structures of operations research. Recent Findings Models related to explicit spatial facets of forest management are increasing in number, size, and complexity. Specialized approaches have been developed that are tailored to spatial facets of forestry problems. Improvements have also been made in ways of solving existing spatial models. Uncertainty is also being addressed in applications, and most recent studies tend to address multiple forest objectives. Summary Spatial interrelationships between stands are important considerations in forest planning. Operation research models can help explore the complex combinatorial nature of the situation. The need to better integrate multiple objectives over large landscapes is commonly suggested. Tradeoff analyses are important for decision makers to better understand forest-wide opportunities. New technology including parallel processing will help increase the practicality of model applications.