Integrating stand and landscape decisions for multi-purposes of forest harvesting

Forests on Changbai Mountain provide important ecological and economic services to the eastern Eurasian Continent. During the past decades, many of the forests have been harvested, mainly with clearcutting methods. Since 1998, new forest policies have required that forests be harvested with selective cutting methods. This paper demonstrates how to use a decision support system, FORESTAR, to select harvesting targets at a landscape level and to determine cutting intensity and cycle at a stand level. The study site is the Baihe Forestry Bureau, a typical forestry enterprise in northeast China. Based on the considerations of costs, timber production, and landscape integrity, three options are used to select forests for harvesting. An index called Priority Order is used to sort out all the selected forest stands with the three options. A diameter transition matrix model is then used to simulate and compare outcomes of different cutting intensities and cycles. The two decision steps are integrated as an interactive decision-making loop. The final logging plans worked out with such a decision-making process facilitate the realization of spatially- and temporally-sound forest management.