SBIR-STTR Award

The importance of forest management planning is increasing as more demands are placed on our forest resources. Simply sustaining timber production is no longer good enough. Spatial arrangement of the forest is especially important for environmental quality and wildlife populations. Spatial aspects of management are difficult to address in forest planning models. Few models are currently available that can address these aspects for realistic-size situations. A new dynamic programming approach is proposed as a potential useful planning tool. It can likely help track and control key spatial measures of forest quality like forest interior space and forest edge, and at the same time, address important timber production considerations. Research proposed will refine this approach and prove its usefulness for forest-wide planning and policy analysis.Applications:Computers offer real potential to aid forest planning. Computers can explore many of the almost unlimited number of management options available. Yet a huge gap remains between what is discussed in the literature and what is available for use. New practical methods are needed. Business opportunities exist not so much in sales of new software but in technical assistance in implementing it. This assistance can range from training sessions to contracted analyses to customized software development and data integration. Potential benefits are large as forest acreages are enormous with management decisions oRen having large economic and environmental impacts.

Planning becomes increasingly important as more pressures are put on the forest. New information about the environment indicates that the spatial arrangement of the forest is especially important. It is a challenge to address spatial arrangement over time while also planning for timber production. Phase I demonstrated the technical feasibility of a new approach to help integrate timber production and environmental planning. It can address explicitly many site-level spatial interdependencies while analyzing regional timber production potential and identifying specific strategies. It is innovative in its way of combining dynamic programming and moving-windows concepts of geographic information systems to explore a wide variety of management options. Research will help improve methods to provide more insight necessary to understand trade-offs between environmental and economic objectives at the landscape and regional level. Emphasis is on a systems approach to coordinate management as best possible.Applications:The overall need for landscape-level models and the positive results from Phase I have already influenced both National Forests in Minnesota to propose to use this approach as the cornerstone for analysis in their current forest plan. Both forest industry and public agencies recognize the need for better coordinated landscape level planning across all forest ownerships. With this new modeling system and the skills to apply it effectively, this new firm has enormous potential. It fits well with the SBIR objectives to sustain production, protect the environment and promote economic well-being in rural areas.