Overhulser P FEMC2007

Sustainability of Forest Resources: Assessing the Various Measures

Pam Overhulser, Oregon Department of Forestry, 2600 State St., Salem, OR, 97310, USA, poverhulser@odf.state.or.us
Eric Cox, FORSight Resources, LLC, 8761 Dorchester Road, Suite 101, North Charleston, SC, 29420. USA, Eric.Cox@FORSightResources.com
John Sessions, Department of Forest Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 97331-5706, USA, john.sessions@oregonstate.edu
Pete Bettinger, Warnell School of Forest Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA, pbettinger@warnell.uga.edu

Sustainability of values is a predominant theme in natural resource management, since as land managers we have an inherent need to provide current and future generations the products and services that they desire. One of the main questions that arise in land management planning concerns the attributes of the land management system that should be used as measures of sustainability. We plan to assess several measures of sustainability on two hypothetical forests in the southern and western U.S. The first measure involves the sustainability of timber production. In this case it is the yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management. This implies that a planning process is guided by the need to balance the growth of a forest with the harvest levels. The second measure involves the sustainability of multiple uses, which suggests one should optimize the use of human-valued products and services, and thus it expands beyond simply commodity production (timber harvests). In this case it is the yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management in addition to maintaining a set of habitat conditions for certain wildlife species. While many other combinations of economic and ecological (or recreational, or socio-economic) goals can be considered, we focus on this one set. The third measure involves sustainability of ecosystems and social values. In this case one manages for healthy, diverse and productive forests within a landscape designed to sustain associated ecological processes and economic values. To accomplish this task, various amounts and spatial locations of stand structure or cover types will be defined based on wildlife habitat considerations that are appropriate to the area considered. We hope, with this research, to be able to apply these different measures of sustainability to hypothetical forests and evaluate the implications. In addition, other measures that can be gleaned from voluntary sustainability programs may be included in this analysis.