Optimal conservation resource allocation under variable economic and ecological time discounting rates in boreal forest (original) (raw)
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Ecosystems supply a wide variety of valued commodities, including ecological services. Valuing these commodities and determining the implications of their valuation for the optimal management of ecosystems is challenging. This paper considers the optimal spatial use of forest ecosystems given that they can be utilised for conserving wildlife species and for producing logs. It takes into account the alternatives of selective logging and heavy (less selective) logging. It considers whether it is optimal to partition the use of a forest so that a portion of it is used exclusively for wildlife conservation with the remainder being utilised for heavy logging (a dominant use strategy) or to combine wildlife conservation and selective logging in at least part of the forest (a multiple use strategy) with any remainder of the forest being available for heavy logging. The assumed objective is to maximise the profit from logging subject to the population of a focal forest wildlife species being sustained at a particular level, that is at a level at least equal to its minimum viable population. The optimal use strategy cannot be determined a priori but requires alternatives forgone to be assessed. While orangutans are used as an example, the model can be applied to other species. It can also be applied (as is shown) to other ecological services such as the quality of water flowing from forested areas. Although the model may appear at first sight to be quite particular, its application can be extended in several ways mentioned. It demonstrates that the optimal spatial patterns of ecosystem use require individual assessment.
Managing Forests for Multiple Tradeoffs: Compromising on Timber, Carbon, and Biodiversity Objectives
2004
In this paper, we develop a multiple objective, decision-making model that focuses on forest policies that simultaneously achieve carbon uptake and maintenance of ecosystem diversity objectives. Two forest carbon measures are used-a nominal (undiscounted) net carbon uptake as a proxy for long-term carbon sequestration and discounted net carbon uptake that captures the "fast" carbon accumulation aspect. Ecosystem diversity is expressed in terms of desired structures for forest and afforested agricultural land. Economic effects of possible strategies are examined by comparing attainment of these objectives with the net discounted returns from commercial timber harvests and agricultural activities. The tradeoffs between timber and non-timber objectives are obtained by means of compromise programming. Two measures of distance between the current objective values and the ideal ones are used to assess attainment of multiple goals. We explore how the choice of a measure affects the decisions and overall performance. The model is applied to the boreal forest and accompanying marginal agricultural lands in the Peace River region of northeastern British Columbia.
Forest Policy and Economics, 2012
Increased protection of forest biodiversity implies reduced income from timber production both for society and forest owners, and consistent analysis of the relationships between biodiversity benefits and corresponding costs is important both for forest managers as well as policy makers. Using a complex dynamic forest optimization model, we analyse impacts on economy and biodiversity of forest management restrictions implemented to protect biodiversity. A reference scenario is compared to two preservation regimes based on 1) the current Norwegian forest certification system and 2) an expert judgement designed to put strong emphasis on biodiversity protection in boreal forests. Economic impacts are expressed as net present value and harvesting level, while impacts on forest structure are expressed by a vector of variables including old forest proportions, growing stock, number of retention trees, size of buffer zones and amount of dead wood. A rather detailed description of forest structure and biodiversity measures represents the main improvements compared to previous analyses. Different restrictions result in 10-45% decrease in economic value of the forest compared to no restrictions. The most costly measures are found to be 50% increased rotation and keeping old-growth proportions higher than 20%.
Trading off species protection and timber production in forests managed for multiple objectives
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 2004
We address a multiobjective forest-management problem that maximizes harvested timber volume and maximizes the protection of species through the selection of protected habitat reserves. As opposed to reserving parcels of the forest for general habitat purposes, as most published works do, the model we present, and its several variants, concentrate on the preservation status of each one of the species living in the forest under study. Thus, all of the formulations we propose trade off harvested timber volume against the weighted number of preserved species. Each formulation represents a different management policy. Casting the models in a static setting allows us to analyze the effect of several management policies through computational experience with different forest-stucture^species relationships.
Biological Conservation, 2009
To protect land from commercial exploitation is a common conservation practice. However, this requires large financial resources and it is therefore important to evaluate the costeffectiveness of different strategies used in the selection of these conservation areas. In this study we compare four strategies and relate the differences in cost-effectiveness to differences in the selection process. We measure conservation benefits both as the amount of three tree structures and as the number of species in three species groups. We also estimate both the information cost associated with selecting conservation areas and the opportunity cost. We found the key habitat strategy to be the over-all most cost-effective. In this strategy, the areas have a flexible size and are selected by the authorities in a national field survey.
European Journal of Forest Research, 2011
Setting aside parcels of land is the main conservation strategy to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss worldwide. Because funding for biological conservation is limited, it is important to distinguish the most efficient ways to use it. Here, we assess implications of alternative measures to conserve biodiversity in managed boreal forest landscapes. We calculated four alternative spatio-temporal scenarios and compared these to the current management regime over 100-year time period. In the alternative scenarios, a fixed amount of funding was invested in (1) permanent large reserves (each tens of ha in size), (2) permanent small reserves (each a few ha in size), (3) temporary small reserves (based on 10-year contracts with private land owners), and (4) green-tree retention (small groups of trees retained on clear-cuts). To assess biodiversity implications, we used habitat suitability indices to calculate overall habitat availability for five groups of red-listed and habitat-specific species associated with decaying spruce logs. The possibilities for timber harvests did not differ among the scenarios, but biodiversity performance was different. The scenarios with permanent reserves tended to outperform other scenarios, suggesting that conservation policies based on permanent reserves are the most cost-efficient in the long term. Results, however, varied among time scales and species groups. In the short term, a strategy of investment in temporary small reserves was the most efficient. Habitat for species associated with old spruce dead-wood and preferring shade was rare throughout all simulations, and therefore, it is likely that these species cannot be sustained in managed forests. Species that live on fresh deadwood and are associated with forest edges coped well in all scenarios suggesting that such species will persist in managed landscapes without additional conservation Communicated by M. Moog.
Spatial trade-offs between ecological and economical sustainability in the boreal production forest
Journal of Environmental Management, 2023
Economically-oriented forestry aims to sustain timber harvest revenues, while ecologically-oriented management supplies suitable habitat for species using deadwood as primary habitat. As these objectives are conflicting, planning for economic and ecological sustainability involves compromise and trade-offs. We analyze the spatial trade-offs between the economic value from timber harvesting and the volume of deadwood in the boreal forest. We assess these trade-offs from three perspectives: (1) landscape characteristics, affected by conservation strategies; (2) forest management promoting either economic or ecological values; (3) uncertainty in inventory errors undermining the estimate of the two sustainability objectives. To reveal the tradeoffs between the forest economic and ecological values we simulated and optimized a production landscape in Finland 30 years into the future accounting for uncertainty in biomass and deadwood inventories. We found that, with a limited reduction in timber harvesting (7%), (i) the amount of deadwood increased more in non-aggregated (45%) than in aggregated (16%) stands, (ii) constraining stands in adjacent areas further increased deadwood (21%) respect to the matrix and (iii) 7% of connected stand area harbored ≥20 m 3 /ha deadwood supporting survival of nearthreatened species. Our results demonstrate that the structure of the landscape for biodiversity can be improved with limited economic losses. However, improving habitat configuration requires larger economic losses than only increasing habitat amount, but its ecological benefits are larger both for common and red-listed species. We found that management oriented towards stand aggregation not only creates connected areas with high deadwood of high value biodiversity but also improves the value of the whole matrix by decreasing intensive timber harvesting and energy wood collection. Finally, we found that uncertainties alter the estimate of the potential of the forest landscape to supply deadwood, and this can affect the choice of management actions to allocate over the landscape. To conclude, our results demonstrate the trade-offs between economic forest use and conservation are affected differently by landscape characteristics, forest management and uncertainty in inventory errors. As such these drivers should be considered when optimizing the forest for multiple uses.
Ecological Modelling, 2010
An important element of resource management and conservation is an understanding of the tradeoffs between marketed products, such as timber, and measures of environmental quality, such as biodiversity. In this paper, we develop an integrated economic-ecological spatial optimization model that we then apply to evaluate alternate forest policies on a 560,000 km 2 study region of managed boreal forest in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. The integrated model incorporates dynamic forest sector harvesting, current levels of oil and gas sector development, coarse-filter or habitat-based old forest indicators, a set of empirical forest bird abundance models, and statistical models of the natural and current fire regimes. Using our integrated model, economic tradeoff curves, or production possibility frontiers, are developed to illustrate the cost of achieving coarse-filter targets by a set time (50 years) within a 100-year time horizon. We found levels of ecological indicators and economic returns from the timber industry could both be increased if spatial constraints imposed by the current policy environment were relaxed; other factors being equal, this implies current policy should be revised. We explore the production possibility frontier's relationship to the range of natural variation of old forest habitat, and show how this range can be used to guide choices of preferred locations along the frontier. We also show that coarse-filter constraints on the abundance of certain habitat elements are sufficient to satisfy some fine-filter objectives, expressed as the predicted abundances of various species of songbirds.
2007
An important element of resource management and conservation is an understanding of the tradeoffs between marketed products, such as timber, and measures of environmental quality, such as biodiversity. In this paper, we develop an integrated economic-ecological spatial optimization model that we then apply to evaluate alternate forest policies on a 560,000 km 2 study region of managed boreal forest in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. The integrated model incorporates dynamic forest sector harvesting, current levels of oil and gas sector development, coarse-filter or habitat-based old forest indicators, a set of empirical forest bird abundance models, and statistical models of the natural and current fire regimes. Using our integrated model, economic tradeoff curves, or production possibility frontiers, are developed to illustrate the cost of achieving coarse-filter targets by a set time (50 years) within a 100-year time horizon. We found levels of ecological indicators and economic returns from the timber industry could both be increased if spatial constraints imposed by the current policy environment were relaxed; other factors being equal, this implies current policy should be revised. We explore the production possibility frontier's relationship to the range of natural variation of old forest habitat, and show how this range can be used to guide choices of preferred locations along the frontier. We also show that coarse-filter constraints on the abundance of certain habitat elements are sufficient to satisfy some fine-filter objectives, expressed as the predicted abundances of various species of songbirds.
Managing boreal forests for the simultaneous production of collectable goods and timber revenues
Timber production is an economically important provisioning ecosystem service in forests, but is often in conflict with the provision of other ecosystem services. In multifunctional forestry, the production of timber and non-timber ecosystem services should coexist in the same landscape. To this end, we explored the capacity of a boreal landscape to simultaneously produce collectable goods − bilberry (Vaccimium myrtillus L.), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) and cep (Boletus edulis Bull.) − alongside timber revenues. We also identified optimal forest management plans to achieve this. Furthermore, we analyzed trade-offs between collectable good yields and timber production , as well as between their economic values. We ran forest growth simulations under seven alternative management regimes at a landscape level across 50-year planning horizons. Then, we used multi-objective optimization to explore trade-offs and identify optimal forest management plans. The results showed that the strongest trade-off was between bilberry and timber production , resulting in a large loss in timber revenues for a gain in bilberry production. However, the conflicts between other collectables and timber production were relatively small: it was possible to increase the provision of collectable goods 4–15% with small reductions (3−5%) from timber revenues. With careful forest planning, there is the potential to simultaneously produce high levels of collectable goods and timber revenues in the landscape.