Improved forest harvest planning : integration of transportation analysis with a management unit cut scheduling model

Forest harvest planning involves determining, in time and place, the flow of timber to be generated from the forest resource. Existing planning models have addressed the temporal aspects of timber supply. However, the spatial aspects of timber supply planning, particularly at the management unit level, have principally been ignored. This study presents an analytical framework for examining the transportation system of a management unit, its interrelationship with the timber base, and the impacts on strategic harvest planning. The transportation system is evaluated through network analysis techniques. Routing strategies from the stand to the mill are examined. The costs of primary access development and log transport are integrated with the forest inventory, providing a more complete assessment of timber value. Homogeneous stand aggregations and associated yield projections, pertinent to management unit planning, are formed using factor and cluster analysis. Dynamic programming allows optimal allocations of the stand groupings across stratifications which recognize transport and accessibility costs. The resulting timber classes are coupled with management prescriptions and evaluated through a cut scheduling model. Report generation capabilities then allow interpretation of the harvest scheduling results in terms of not only the timber classes, but in the spatial context of the individual stands. The methodology is applied to a British Columbia Public Sustained Yield Unit. The usefulness of the system is demonstrated through analyses which: 1) identify road development and transport costs, 2) evaluate alternative wood flow patterns, 3) identify the volume flow potential of the unit, 4) identify the dollar flow potential of the unit, and 5) illustrate the contribution of integrating the transportation system in the scheduling of harvests.Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat