Forest management planning at small-scale level under different climate change scenarios

Abstract

Current forest management planning focuses on analysing more management alternatives, especially due to the increasing risk of forest disturbances caused by climate changes and also because prompt adaptation of forest management to forest owner requests is needed as a reaction to changes. The utilisation of growth simulators in the acquirement of the information necessary for the decision process has been approved. Their usage allows us to perform quick and effective evaluation of potential forest management approaches in time. Within the case study of the owner management unit in Orava region the main task was to investigative forest management planning possibilities in real conditions from the point of four types of owners with specific preferences for the management of the area. On the base of the proposal of possible management treatments the development of the area was simulated for a period of three decades under three future climate scenarios and the multicriteria optimization of forest management was performed using the method of interaction decision maps. A number of acceptable alternatives were obtained from the optimization procedure, which are characterised by the approach of individual owners. The results representing the stand level were consequently processed to a level of the forest owner unit (forest management plan creation) as formulation of age class distribution. At the level of forest owner unit, age class distribution should converge to normal distribution to ensure permanent production and balance of felling. This approximation can be achieved by regulating fellings at a stand level. The results indicate that it is necessary to respect individual levels of forest management planning, what supports the utilisation of alternative solutions under different climate change scenarios.