Kyle Eyvindson, Annika Kangas, Olha Nahorna, Juliette Hunault-Fontbonne, Maria Potterf. (2024). Integrating wind disturbances into forest planning: a stochastic programming approach. Silva Fennica vol. 58 no. 4 article id 23044. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.23044

Keywords: forest planning; wind damage; risk mitigation; stochastic optimization

Highlights: Assessing risk should focus on the objectives of the decision maker, not simply to minimize wind damage; We explored timber income-oriented objectives, maximizing net profit and maintaining a high even-flow of timber related income; Integrating wind disturbances had limited advantages when prioritizing net profits, however, the impact was dramatic when striving to maintain a high even-flow of timber.

Abstract | Full text in HTML | Full text in PDF | Author Info

Forest disturbances challenge our ability to carefully plan for sustainable use of forest resources. As forest disturbances are stochastic, we cannot plan for the disturbance at any specific time or location. However, we can prepare for the possibility of a disturbance by integrating its potential intensity range and frequency when developing forest management plans. This study uses stochastic programming to integrate wind intensity (wind speed) and wind event frequency (number of occurrences) into the forest planning process on a small coastal Finnish forest landscape. We used a mechanistic model to quantify the critical wind speed for tree felling, with a Monte Carlo approach to include wind damage and salvage logging into forest management alternatives. We apply a stochastic programming model to explore two objectives: maximizing the expected forest net present value or maximizing the even-flow of income. To assess the effects of improper wind risk assumptions in planning, we compare the results when optimizing for correct versus incorrect wind intensity and frequency assumptions. When maximizing for net present value, the impacts of misidentifying wind intensity and frequency are minor, likely due to harvests planned immediately as trees reach maturity. For the case when maximizing even-flow of income, incorrectly identifying wind intensity and frequency severely impacts the ability to meet the required harvest targets and reduces the expected net present value. The specific utility of risk mitigation therefore depends on the planning problem. Overall, we show that incorporating wind disturbances into forest planning can inform forest owners about how they can manage wind risk based on their specific risk preferences.

Eyvindson, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Campus Ås, Norway; Natural Resource Institute Finland (Luke), Bioeconomy and Environment, Laatokartanonkaari 9, 00790 Helsinki, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0647-1594 E-mail: kyle.eyvindson@nmbu.no
Kangas, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Bioeconomy and Environment, Yliopistokatu 6, 80100 Joensuu, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8637-5668 E-mail: annika.kangas@luke.fi
Nahorna, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Campus Ås, Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5497-0315 E-mail: olha.nahorna@nmbu.no
Hunault-Fontbonne, Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Campus Ås, Norway https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1864-5162 E-mail: juliette.hunault@nmbu.no
Potterf, Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management Group, Technical University of Munich, Hans Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6763-1948 E-mail: maria.potterf@tum.de

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