Organizers: Harald Vacik (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria), Jose Borges &
Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo (Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal) & Lujsk-Ola Eriksson (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)
Supporting participatory land use planning processes and decisions: the GISCAME platform. Fürst, C. (University of Bonn, Germany; cfuerst@uni-bonn.de), Frank, S. (Dresden University of Technology, Germany; susanne.frank@tu-dresden.de), Pietzsch, K. (PiSolution GmbH, Germany; kp@pisolution.de), Pietzsch, F. (PiSolution GmbH, Germany; fp@pisolution.de).
The aim of decision support tools is to identify optimal land use strategies for combinations of biogeophysical conditions and socioeconomic constraints. Challenges include 1) obtaining information on relevant rules and constraints and 2) refl ecting
interactions between participants that modify them. Scenario simulation approaches supporting what-if constellations and negotiation on trade-off acceptance limits help to solve these problems. The software GISCAME was developed to support participatory decision processes that involve interactions between various stakeholders. GISCAME combines GIS routines for data handling with a cellular automaton for scenario building and a hierarchical multicriteria evaluation scheme. The platform offers scenario instruments such as simple mouse-click routines for inexperienced users, routines to defi ne attribute and proximity dependent transition probabilities for experienced users, and expert-oriented rule confi guration kits for attribute dependent or legally defi ned scenario constraints. Qualitative feed-back on ecosystem services balance, their temporal variability, and risks such as water erosion or mass movement is provided. This is complemented by assessing the impact of the spatial constellation of land uses for ecological and aesthetical land system value. We demonstrate a case from an integrated rural development on how to use the support tool to sustain, and increase temporally, variable lignocellulosic resources combined with a trade-offs analysis.
Architecture of a decision support system to address climate change (SADfLOR). Garcia-Gonzalo, J., Borges, J. (Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal; jordigarcia@isa.utl.pt; joseborges@isa.utl.pt).
The competition for forest resources is prone to increase in the context of global change (e.g., climate change, prices, and stakeholders’ preferences). This tendency points out the urgency of developing new tools that may address risk and uncertainty.
This research addresses the need to develop decision tools to address climate change in forest planning. In this research, we discuss a stakeholders’ engagement plan and a participatory planning approach to involve the stakeholders in the design and identifi cation of components for a decision support toolbox/platform (SADfLOR). The proposed approach was tested in Chamus-ca County, loChamus-cated in central Portugal, where different stakeholders are involved in planning processes (e.g., industrial owners, non-industrial private forestland owners, forest service providers). Based on this methodology, we developed a decision support system for addressing climate change on eucalypt plantations (SADfLOR v ecc 1.0). The system was also applied to Chamusca County to analyse ways to adapt management plans to future climate changes. Results demonstrate that the design of optimal management plans should take into account climate change.
Ecosystem services and climate change: a decision support process for a community forest in the Austrian Alps. Irauschek, F., Maroschek, M., Rammer, W., Lexer, M. (University of Natural Resources and Life Science, Austria; fl orian.irauschek@boku.
ac.at; michaek.maroschek@boku.ac.at; werner.rammer@boku.ac.at; mj.lexer@boku.ac.at).
Various stakeholder demands for timber production, protection against gravitational natural hazards, nature conservation, wildlife management, and hunting, as well as tourism, challenge the development of forest management strategies. Additionally, changing climatic and socioeconomic conditions affect mountain forests and the provision of forest ecosystem services and impose complex decision making problems. For a large community-based forest holding in the eastern Alps in Austria, we demonstrate a decision support process for the development of adaptive management options at strategic and operational levels. Based on a generalized decision process, a comprehensive set of modelling tools was employed to assess the vulnerability of ecosystem services towards climate change under current management practices and to design and evaluate alternative adaptive strategies. Among others, a hybrid forest ecosystem model including bark beetle, wind and browsing disturbances, GIS-based assessment tools for protection forest functionality, and bird habitat quality and visualization tools were used to analyse and communicate alternatives. Interaction with internal and external stakeholders informed the modelling and assessment process. Results indicate increasing disturbance intensity and the need to adapt forest management. We highlight the assessment and decision making process and provide generalized recommendations for practical mountain forest management in the eastern Alps.
Studying trade-offs between biodiversity and ecosystem services: an integrated modeling approach based on uneven-aged mountain forests. Lafond, V., Cordonnier, T., Courbaud, B. (National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, France; valentine.lafond@irstea.fr; thomas.cordonnier@irstea.fr; Benoit.Courbaud@irstea.fr).
Multifunctionality of Central European mountain forests have long been acknowledged, as they host numerous emblematic species, supply timber production, and have an important protection role against natural hazards, as well as aesthetic and recreational functions. Though these forests have a long tradition of selection silvicultural systems, considered favorable to multifunctionality, explicit consideration of ecosystem services provision within management planning is a recent issue and requires a better understanding of their response to silvicultural practices. Decision support systems are thus of great interest, though they often rely on the comparison of contrasted management practices and rarely on small adjustments within a given silvicultural system. This contribution aims at presenting a methodological framework designed to study the impacts of variations of management practices on biodiversity, ecosystem services provisions, and trade-offs. We conducted a simulation study coupling an uneven-aged management algorithm with Samsara2, an individual based and spatially explicit forest simulation model designed for spruce-fi r uneven-aged mountain forests. Sensitivity analysis enabled infl uencing factors to be detected and response surfaces of biodiversity and production indicators to be established. Trade-offs between indicators were then identifi ed and studied thanks to Pareto frontier techniques, and interesting management prescriptions were discussed with forest managers through a participatory approach.
Long-term forest planning under risk and uncertainty: can robust linear programming help? Mäkinen, A., Rasinmäki, J.
(Iptim Inc., Finland; antti.makinen@iptim.com; jussi.rasinmaki@iptim.com).
Optimization methods are used in strategic forest planning to create plans that enable the best utility for the decision makers. The applied optimization techniques depend on the type and scale of the forest planning task, but it is common that the time horizon is quite long. Therefore the accurate realization of the plan is under considerable uncertainty; the outcome is affected among other things by errors in input data, natural variation in forest growth, natural hazards, and fl uctuation in timber prices. However, accounting for the uncertainties in planning is not a common practice because the methods are complex and the information about the uncertainties is not always available. We present a case study on whether these hurdles could be mitigated to such a degree that the uncertainty evaluation could be a routine part in creating a strategic forest management plan. We will focus on
robust optimization as a method for accounting for the uncertainties, scenario defi nition for different uncertainty and risk factors, and the implementation of these in decision support software, Iptim, to make the combined approach usable for a forest planner.
The focus of the case study is on sustainable timber production over a long time horizon, under economic objectives.
Design features behind the success of the Ecosystem Management Decision Support system. Reynolds, K. (U.S. Forest Service, USA; kreynolds@fs.fed.us).
The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is an application framework for designing and implementing knowledge-based decision support systems for environmental analysis and planning at any geographic scale(s). The system integrates a state-of-the-art geographic information system, as well as knowledge-based reasoning and decision modeling
technologies, to provide decision support for a substantial portion of the adaptive management process of ecosystem management.
It integrates a logic engine to perform landscape evaluations, and a decision engine for developing management priorities.
The logic component 1) reasons about large, abstract, multi-faceted ecosystem management problems, 2) performs useful evaluations with incomplete information, 3) evaluates the infl uence of missing information, and 4) determines priorities for missing information. The planning component determines priorities for management activities, taking into account not only ecosystem condition, but also criteria that account for logistical concerns of potential management actions. Both components include intuitive diagnostic features that facilitate communicating modeling results to a broad audience. Seventeen years after its initial release, EMDS remains popular in the natural resource community, perhaps because it provides a very general design framework suitable for many questions and spatial scales. This and other features of the system design that have fi gured in its success will be highlighted in the presentation.
Community of practice of forest management decision support systems and lessons learned for development and application. Vacik, H. (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria; harald.vacik@boku.ac.at), Garcia-Gonzalo, J. (Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal; jordigarcia@isa.utl.pt), Gordon, S. (Portland State University, USA; sean.gordon@pdx.edu).
The motivation for the community of practice (CoP) on forest management decision support systems (FMDSS) came from the European Union-funded COST Action FORSYS (FP0804), which convened a network of more than 120 experts from 26 countries in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. As part of the networking activities, participants built an online information repository to share information on FMDSS software and their application (including 57 software systems, 26 country reports, 30 case studies, and a survey among the CoP experts). Lessons learned were synthesized from these sources following a standard-ized format and common structure that could accommodate the different sources and was suffi ciently detailed to be actionable.
This contribution will explore how FMDSS are used for a sustained provision of ecosystem services under climate change and present a general framework for the demands on FMDSS supporting this complex task (e.g., methods for uncertainty and risk evaluation, climate sensitive growth models including disturbances). Based on the information compiled, we identifi ed climate change and ecosystem services as somewhat common in different data sources but rarely used explicitly. We will draw our conclusions on decision support systems development and application based on the framework presented.
Posters
Evaluating future wood availability in Europe: methods and tools. Barreiro, S. (Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal;
smb@isa.utl.pt), Schelhaas, M. (Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands; MartJan.Schelhaas@wur.nl), Antón-Fernández, C. (Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, Norway; caf@skogoglandskap.no), Colin, A. (AgroParisTechCentre de Nancy, France; Antoine.Colin@ign.fr), Kandler, G. (Forest Research Institute of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany; gerald.kaendler@
forst.bwl.de), Schadauer, K. (Bundesamt und Forschungszentrum fur Wald, Austria; klemens.schadauer@bfw.gv.at).
Sustainable wood availability in Europe is highly relevant to defi ne global change mitigation strategies at national and European levels and to support the proposal of an increased use of renewable energy sources. Future scenarios at the European Union-level highlight a defi cit of wood supply compared to wood consumption. UseWood COST Action (FP1001) aims at improving information on the methodologies used at the European level for assessing the potential sustainable wood supply based on National Forest Inventories’ data. To reduce uncertainties and better evaluate future wood supply forecasts, countries were asked to describe the methodologies and/or tools currently used to assist management that allow national evaluations of future wood availability. A total of 18 European country reports were received giving a fair characterization of the methodologies currently in use in Europe. A preliminary analysis shows that half the countries utilize forest simulation tools based on National Forest Inventory (NFI) data, mostly supply-driven simulators, whereas most eastern countries have more or less developed methodolo-gies based on Standwise Forest Inventory (SFI). The remaining countries are either using tools developed for specifi c areas of their countries or nation-wide applicable tools that are not NFI based.
The system of silviculture for conservation and development (SICODESI): lessons from a successful case of forest management in Jalisco, México. Dominguez Hernandez, F. (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico;
forestal_umar@hotmail.com).
The Mexican Forestry Law of 1986 mandated a policy of integrated forest management. The Sistema de Conservación y Desarrollo Silvícola (SICODESI) is a technology developed by the University of Helsinki at the request of the Mexican govern-ment to automate the concept of integrated forest managegovern-ment. The software was expected to empower forest owners to take over forest planning and decision making processes that before were the responsibility of professional foresters. SICODESI has been in practice for >20 years now. This is a chronicle of the SICODESI experience, assessed from its own stated purposes, and also from an abstract conception of forest management. Results confi rm that SICODESI was politically and biologically successful thanks to a viable silvicultural regime, and a legal operation that produced an even fl ow of removals, while increasing timber stocking and forest health, while sustaining reasonable economic benefi ts for the forest owner. Policy goals failed because the forest owner remained disengaged, uninvolved, and ill informed; key decisions remained in the hands of professionals and
regulatory agencies. Satisfactory benefi ts accrued to the owner, and good expectations held by forest authority and the public provide credibility to SICODESI as a promising option for future Mexican forest management.
Spatial aspects of biodiversity as a part of the harvest scheduling decision process. Kašpar, J., Marusak, R., Vopenka, P., Hlavaty, R. (Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic; kasparj@fl d.czu.cz; marusak@fl d.czu.cz; vopenka@fl d.czu.cz;
hlavaty@pef.czu.cz).
Over the last decade, the infl uence of non-wood productive functions, such as environmental services, has been increasingly expanding. We can expect that the impact of these functions will continue to grow due to mitigation of climate change impacts.
As a result, foresters have to seek tools for solving complex ecosystem management problems that include social, environmental, and timber-production functions. The real forest management problems are multi-objective, meaning they include more than one objective, and several different restrictions and constraints as well, such as confi guration of patches, their size and distribution, shape, adjacency or green-up delay, connectivity, proximity or core area, and many others. These problems can be solved by special exact mathematical methods such as multi-objective programming and by tools of geographic information systems (GIS).
The use of multi-objective programming in forestry brings many risks. Determination of objective weights can be one of the many problems. Another problem is that each objective takes vastly different values in real environmental situations in most cases. This work presents possible solutions of the example of spatial harvest scheduling with regard to biodiversity aspects.
DSS Optimal: a case study from the Czech Republic. Marusak, R., Kašpar, J., Vopenka, P. (Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic; marusak@fl d.czu.cz; kasparj@fl d.czu.cz; vopenka@fl d.czu.cz).
Forest managers have traditionally planned harvests using expert knowledge, including the spatial distribution of harvest units.
The amount of timber to be harvested has then been regulated by market demand. In addition to expert knowledge, there is a set of rules, which can be automated. Computerized harvest planning will lead not only to saving time for forest managers, but it will also enable them to explore various scenarios in a matter of minutes. We introduce Optimal: a GIS tool for spatial and temporal decision of harvest scheduling. Using Optimal, forest managers can create harvest units by cutting polygons of forest stands in a digital map. After the harvest units are created by the user, the adjacency matrix is automatically produced and passed to the solver module. The solver performs calculations using integer programming and then returns the spatial distribution of harvest units for each harvest period. Users can set the number of parameters and criteria according to desired ecosystem services to create different scenarios. Optimal is a decision support system (DSS) designed for and applied to clear cutting and shelterwood silvicultural systems with respect to environmental and economic constraints.
Balancing biomass and biodiversity in protected areas, the Triglav National Park case study. Pisek, R., Beguš, J.
(Slovenia Forest Service, Slovenia; rok.pisek@zgs.si; jurij.begus@zgs.gov.si), Poljanec, A. (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia;
ales.poljanec@bf.uni-lj.si), Grum, A. (Slovenia Forest Service, Slovenia; andrej.grum@zgs.si).
In Central Europe, national parks are mainly designed as protected areas where the traditional use of forests is allowed.
Sustainable forest management also provides wood for biomass heating, which is in line with the aim of nature protection and a low-carbon society. To properly manage the resources, we need appropriate GIS tools. In our research, Slovenian Wood Energy Information System (SWEIS) from Slovenia Forest Service (SFS) was used to evaluate four different scenarios in Triglav National Park from biomass and energy and biodiversity views. First, we assessed available forest biomass according to current cut of biomass (Scenario 1), allowable cut according to forest management plans (Scenario 2), reduced cut due to pursuing the objectives of nature conservation (Scenario 3), and increased use of forests with higher cut (Scenario 4). In the second step, we assessed present and possible future local biomass demands. In the paper, an improved and tested existing high quality decision support SWEIS for a special protected area with high conservation value will be presented; comparisons between different scenarios will be evaluated and the balance between conservation and economic objectives in the fi eld of biomass will be discussed.