Optimal harvest scheduling at the forest level in the presence of the risk of fire

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The effect of fire on forest yields has been well documented in stand-level analyses; however, forest-level effects are less widely known. A set of dynamic equations can be constructed that describe the evolution of a forest under the impact of harvesting and random fire. When fire is treated in a deterministic fashion, these equations can be used to formulate an optimal harvest scheduling problem that can be solved using linear programming. Examples using white spruce data for the Fort Nelson Timber Supply Area of British Columbia [Canada] show that even modest rates of fire can have a dramatic impact and that present harvest scheduling models may be considerably overestimating projected forest harvest levels. Results also show that the deterministic approach appears to be a reasonable approximation of the true stochastic fire problem.