Savage D FEMC2007

An Evaluation of Replanning Strategies for Dealing with Fire-Related Uncertainty in Forest Management Planning

David W. Savage, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, 33 Willcocks St., Toronto, ON, M5S 3B3, Canada, david.savage@utoronto.ca
David L. Martell, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, 33 Willcocks St., Toronto, ON, M5S 3B3, Canada, martell@smokey.forestry.utoronto.ca

Fire and other stochastic processes create uncertainty for forest managers who are required to provide a stable, long-term timber supply for mills. Forest management planners commonly use rolling planning horizons with replanning to deal with uncertainty. Frequent replanning has been suggested as a good strategy for dealing with uncertainty due to fire, but the benefits of replanning have never been quantified. This study will use a discrete event simulation model to evaluate replanning policies in a simulated flammable forest. The model has three main components: 1) an LP timber harvest scheduling model, 2) a stochastic fire occurrence and spread model, and 3) a forest growth model. The simulation model first creates a timber harvest schedule, then implements timber harvesting, stochastic fire and forest growth on an annual time step. New harvest schedules are developed at designated points in time and the harvest, burn, and growth cycle continues. Each simulation run is for a 500 year period. Harvest level is evaluated for several replanning policies using a probabilistic framework to evaluate long-term forest sustainability.