Trading off species protection and timber production in forests managed for multiple objectives

Abstract

We address a multiobjective forest-management problem that maximizes harvested timber volume and maximizes the protection of species through the selection of protected habitat reserves. As opposed to reserving parcels of the forest for general habitat purposes, as most published works do, the model we present, and its several variants, concentrate on the preservation status of each one of the species living in the forest under study. Thus, all of the formulations we propose trade off harvested timber volume against the weighted number of preserved species. Each formulation represents a different management policy. Casting the models in a static setting allows us to analyze the effect of several management policies through computational experience with different forest-stucture-species relationships.