Using GIS and multicriteria decision aid to optimize the direction of trees cutting in the forest ecosystem: A case study

Forest trees' harvesting is a critical activity in the forest ecosystem management process. This activity is among the most destructive practices and causes ecological damage on the forest ecosystem. The traditional way of trees' harvesting is not rational and should be optimized to reduce damage and to improve the profitability of forest resources. Besides, a cost-effective and ecologically-aware harvesting activity is likely to guarantee a sustainable management while ensuring a satisfactory financial benefit. We are interested in this paper in optimizing the direction of trees cutting to reduce ecological damage while taking into account spatial and financial constraints of loggers. We propose a multicriteria geo-optimization approach based on a combination of optimization techniques and GIS functionalities. The optimization method is based on the search for the minimum of a weighted sum of spatial, financial and ecological costs. In this work, we consider various criteria: (1) spatial criteria to consider adjacency restrictions; (2) financial criteria to preserve crop trees for future operations and to facilitate the transport of stems to the log yard; (3) ecological criteria to reduce the destruction of trees and soil degradation. Moreover, spatial data are extracted from Raster-based GIS and used to select trees to be accessed as well as to estimate the cost of cutting and transporting them. We present the results of experiments on real data from the Neotropical forest of French Guiana.