Forest management

(forestry) Measures concerned with the effective organization of a forest to ensure continued production of its goods and services.

The planning and implementation of sustainable production of forest crops and other forest resources and uses. Key decisions include land allocation to different uses or combination of uses, silvicultural method and practices, intensity of management, timber harvest scheduling, and environmental protection.

Nearly three-fourths (360 million acres or 140 million hectares) of all commercial forest land in the United States is privately owned by farmers, forest investment groups, other types of nonindustrial owners, or industrial firms engaged in the business of growing and harvesting timber for conversion to wood products. The objectives and practices of private owners are extremely diverse. Many states and local governments have enacted laws that regulate the practice of private forestry. Therefore, management planning for a specific property requires a detailed review of the owner's objectives, resources, and any legal constraints regarding land uses or choice of management practices in the local area.

One-fourth (about 120 million acres or 49 million hectares) of the commercial forest in the United States is administered by federal and state agencies. The National Forest System, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, is particularly important in the western United States, where it includes nearly one-half of the commercial forest. Each national forest is required by federal law to develop a long-term land management plan, involve the public in evaluating alternatives, project future practices and outputs, and identify methods to mitigate adverse environmental impacts. These plans provide for timber harvesting, wilderness management, watershed protection, wildlife habitat, and other services in combinations that vary from forest to forest. The recovery plans of many endangered species occur primarily on public forest lands.

Forest land-use planning and project implementation requires information about the physical, vegetative, and developmental characteristics of forest resources within the management unit. Aerial photography, satellite imagery, and statistically designed ground surveys are commonly used to obtain the necessary information. The resource assessment should normally include estimates of timber volume classified according to species, age or size class, quality, location, and other attributes that affect value in the local market or have relevance to decision-making. Typically, statistically designed sampling procedures using plots or strips are employed by specially trained technicians to estimate volume. Information about nontimber resources such as wildlife, streams and lakes, fisheries, and historical and archeological sites may also be required, depending upon the owner's objectives and local forest practice regulations. Assessment methods normally utilize both ground and aerial surveys, and professional specialists employed by the owner or by outside consultants. See also Forest measurement; Geographic information systems; Land-use planning; Remote sensing.

A forest typically will have complex structure. There may be a range of soil types, slopes, and aspects that differ in potential productivity. To facilitate planning for such complex situations, optimization methods may be used to schedule management activities over time, determine the timber harvest level, allocate the land base among alternative uses, and calculate benefits and costs. A common method, linear programming, requires that the manager specify both a linear objective function to be maximized and a set of linear equations that describe management constraints. See also Linear programming; Silviculture.

Modern forest management usually involves the production of multiple services of value to the owner or to society. Determining the best mix of services requires technical information on trade-offs between the different outputs, costs and values, and pertinent legal constraints. Subjective evaluations may be required in the case of unpriced services such as wildlife, water, and scenery. Forest structure has a major impact on the mix of outputs. Forest outputs or services can generally be classified as complementary or competitive. Services are complementary if an increase in the output of one is accompanied by an increase in the output of the other. They are competitive if effort to increase the output of one results in a reduction in the output of the other. In response to concerns about landscapes, such as maximum opening sizes, spatial diversity, and wildlife habitat, new scheduling methods are being developed and used (for example, tabu search, simulated annealing, and heuristics). Unlike linear programming, these methods do not guarantee optimal solutions. However, they do provide quality solutions that consider the complexity of modern forest management and can be implemented on the ground. See also Forest and forestry.