Systems Analysis in Forest Resources: Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium, held September 27–30, 2000, Snowmass Village, Colorado, U.S.A.(7 Managing Forest Ecosystems)

Well-managed forests and woodlands are a renewable resource, producing essential raw material with minimum waste and energy use. Rich in habitat and species diversity, forests may contribute to increased ecosystem stability. They can absorb the effects of unwanted deposition and other disturbances and protect neighbouring ecosystems by maintaining stable nutrient and energy cycles and by preventing soil degradation and erosion. They provide much-needed recreation and their continued existence contributes to stabilizing rural communities. Forests are managed for timber production and species, habitat and process conservation. A subtle shift from multiple-use management to ecosystems management is being observed and the new ecological perspective of multi-functional forest management is based on the principles of ecosystem diversity, stability and elasticity, and the dynamic equilibrium of primary and secondary production. Making full use of new technology is one of the challenges facing forest management today. Resource information must be obtained with a limited budget. This requires better timing of resource assessment activities and improved use of multiple data sources. Sound ecosystems management, like any other management activity, relies on effective forecasting and operational control. The aim of this series is to present state-of-the-art research results relating to the practice of forest management. Each reference book, monograph or proceedings volume will be focused to deal with a specific context.

Table of Contents:
Fire and fuels.- Characterizing Historical Variability in Boreal Forest Fire Frequency: Implications for Fire and Forest Management.- Comparing Potential Fuel Treatment Trade-Off Models.- Supply Chain Modeling of Forest Fuel.- Combining Simulation and Optimization for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fuel Treatments for Four Different Fuel Conditions at Landscape Scales.- Determining Forest Fuel Treatment Levels for the Bitterroot Front using VDDT.- Spatial Point Pattern Analysis of Lightning-caused Forest Fires in the Boreal Forest Region of Ontario.- Networks and transportation.- Simulating a Smokejumper Service Delivery System.- An Approach to Optimizing Helicopter Logging Operations.- Annual Harvest Planning Integrated with Crew Assignment and Transportation Planning.- An Application of Combinatorial Optimization Heuristics to Timber Sale Scheduling Considering Distance Dependent Costs and Equipment Balancing Requirements.- An Investigation of the Influence of Digital Elevation Model Inaccuracies on Terrain-Based Delineation of Drainage Networks.- NETWORK 2000, a Program for Optimizing Large Fixed and Variable Cost Transportation Problems.- Forest and landscape planning.- Cooperative Forest Planning Using Criteria, Indicators and Systems Analysis.- Techniques for Assessing Relative Values for Multiple Objective Management on Private Forests.- Structure-Based Management for the State of Oregon: an Application of Combinatorial Optimization Heuristics for Large-Scale Landscape Analysis.- Applying TELSA to Assess Alternative Management Scenarios.- A Decision Support System for Forest Ecosystem Management in Portugal.- Linking Temporal-Optimization and Spatial-Simulation Models for Forest Planning.- Improving Habitat for Species at Risk While Maintaining Timber Supply: the Umpqua Land Exchange Project.- Ecological modelling, biodiversity and wildlife.- An Ecological Approach to Developing a Decision Support System for Forest Planning.- Assessing Forest-Management Strategies Through the Lens of Biodiversity: a Practical Case from Central-West Alberta.- Sustaining Wildlife Populations in Productively Managed Forests.- Designing Compact and Contiguous Reserve Networks Under a Budget Constraint.- Eight Heuristic Planning Techniques Applied to Three Increasingly Difficult Wildlife Planning Problems: a Summary.- Forest resource applications.- Optimal Financial Management of the Yellow-poplar/Oak Covertype in the Central Appalachians.- Comparison of Heuristics for Spatially Constrained Natural Resource Management Problems.- An Adjacency-Modeling Problem Based on Constructing Harvesting Areas.- Estimating and Mapping Five Forest Attributes with Satellite Ancillary Data.- General Equilibrium Analysis of Impacts of NAFTA and WTO on U.S. Forest Products Industries.- Co-integration of Timber and Financial Markets — Implications for Portfolio Selection.- Estimating Wood Utilization Accounts and Input-Output Relations from International Forest Product Statistics.