Multicriteria optimization model for forestry management under climate change uncertainty: an application in Portugal

71 p.En esta tesis, se propone un marco multicrierio de apoyo a la toma de decisiones estratégicas en la Gestión Forestal, teniendo en cuenta la incertidumbre debido al cambio climático. En este contexto, la incertidumbre se modela por medio de escenarios de cambio climático. La tarea de decisión es definir una programación de cosecha que aborde, de forma simultánea, objetivos en conflicto: el valor económico de la estrategia, la cantidad de CO2 total retenida,la eficiencia del uso del agua para la producción de biomasa y la escorrentía de agua (exceso), durante todo el horizonte de planificación.El marco propuesto es una combinación de Programación por Metas y Programación Estocástica. Dependiendo de las preferencias del decisor, el modelo proporciona diversas políticas de planificación de cosecha que producen diferentes trade-offs entre los criterios en conflicto. Por otra parte, se propone la incorporación de un componente de aversión al riesgo, con el fin de mejorar el rendimiento de las políticas obtenidas con respecto a su valor económico.Este nuevo enfoque se ha probado en un verdadero bosque, situado en el centro de Portugal, y que está compuesto por un gran número de unidades de terreno forestal a gestionar (agregadas en 21 stands). El cambio climático es modelado por 32 escenarios, y se considera un horizonte de planificación de 15 años. Los resultados obtenidos muestran la capacidad del marco diseñado, para proporcionar un conjunto de diversas soluciones con diferentes trade-offs entre los cuatro criterios, d´andole al tomador de decisiones la posibilidad de elegir una política de cosecha flexible que cumpla con sus requerimientos. Palabras claves: Gestión Forestal, Cambio Climático, Optimización Multicriterio, Optimización Estocástica, Programación por Metas./ABSTRACT: In this thesis, a multicriteria decision-making framework to support strategical decisions in Forestry Management is proposed, taking into account uncertainty due to climate change. In this setting, uncertainty is modeled by means of climate change scenarios. The decision task is to define a harvest scheduling that addresses, simultaneously, conflicting objectives: the economical value of the strategy, the total CO2 retention, the efficiency of water use for biomass production and the water runoff (excess), during the whole planning horizon. The proposed framework is a combination of Goal Programming and Stochastic Programming. Depending on the decision-maker preferences, the model produces different harvest scheduling policies that yield different tradeoffs among the conflicting criteria. Furthermore, the incorporation of a risk-averse component is proposed, in order to improve the performance of obtained policies with respect to their economical value. This novel approach is tested on a real forest, located in central Portugal, which is comprised by a large number of land forest units to manage (aggregated into 21 stands). The climate change is modeled by 32 scenarios, and a planning horizon of 15 years is considered. The obtained results show the capacity of the designed framework to provide a pool of diverse solutions with different trade-offs among the four criteria, giving to the decision maker the possibility of choosing a flexible harvesting policy that meets her/his requirements.Keywords: Forestry Management, Climate Change, Multicriteria Optimization, Stochastic Optimization, Goal Programming

Making Decision Adaptive to Price Uncertainty and Risk Preference: A New Decision-Making Model for Forest Management

While the forest grows, the price of timber fluctuates. Price uncertainty plays a key role in forestry due to the extended rotation length of growing trees. Like double sides of the same coin, risk preference and uncertainties should be considered together. This is because risk preference represents people’s attitude toward that uncertainty when making management decisions. Risk preference is especially an important issue for forest management because forests are exposed to substantial uncertainties during their long growing period. However, most existing relevant studies either simply overlook the risk preference issue or fail to consider it together with a practical forest management decision-making approach. In this dissertation study, a behavior-based forest management model was developed to measure forest managers’ risk preferences directly through their potential behaviors toward price changes. Besides, an adaptive harvest decision-making approach that incorporates varying levels of risk preference was established. Based on the models developed in this dissertation, numerical simulations were carried out to evaluate the impact of risk preferences in forest management outcomes. Results of simulations show that risk preference could indeed affect the performance of forest management. Besides, a properly selected risk preference level may bring extra risk premiums to forestry investment. In addition, sensitivity analyses found that there always exists a certain level of risk preference that will lead to the highest average return across different scenarios. Furthermore, a case study using the LSU Lee Memorial Forest as the sample site was carried out to demonstrate the adaptive harvest decision-making process using the method developed in prior chapters. The results of this case study not only confirmed the conclusions reached by numerical simulations, but also reiterated the importance of risk management strategy in forest management under uncertainties

Forest Management Approaches for Coping with the Uncertainty of Climate Change: Trade-Offs in Service Provisioning and Adaptability.

The issue of rapid change in environmental conditions under which ecosystem processes and human interventions will take place in the future is relatively new to forestry, whereas the provision of ecosystem services, e.g., timber or fresh water, is at the very heart of the original concept of forest management. Forest managers have developed ambitious deterministic approaches to provide the services demanded, and thus the use of deterministic approaches for adapting to climate change seem to be a logical continuation. However, as uncertainty about the intensity of climate change is high, forest managers need to answer this uncertainty conceptually. One may envision an indeterministic approach to cope with this uncertainty; but how the services will be provided in such a concept remains unclear. This article aims to explore the fundamental aspects of both deterministic and indeterministic approaches used in forestry to cope with climate change, and thereby point out trade-offs in service provisioning and adaptability. A forest owner needs to be able to anticipate these trade-offs in order to make decisions towards sustainable forest management under climate change

Historical roots and the evolving science of forest management under a systemic perspective

In recent history, both a growing awareness of how scientific and societal uncertainty impacts management decisions and of the intrinsic value of nature have suggested new approaches to forest management, with a growing debate in forest science over the need for a paradigmatic shift from the classic conventional world view, based on determinism, predictability, and output-oriented management, towards a world view that has roots in complex adaptive systems theory and is consistent with a nature-based ethic. A conceptual framework under this context is provided by systemic silviculture. In this discussion, we analyze how this approach can be linked to three fundamental moments of the history of forestry and forest science: the Dauerwald theory, Gurnaud's control method, and the origins of environmental ethics. Relationships with the recent history of forest management science and current research perspectives are also highlighted.4n

Variable retention harvesting: Conceptual analysis according to different environmental ethics and forest valuation

Background: Conceptual clarity is important to attain precise communication of scientific knowledge and to implement appropriate technological and policy actions. Many concepts referring to forest management are widely used by decision-makers, regardless of their complexity. Although the scientific and methodological issues of forestry practices are frequently discussed in the literature, their normative dimensions are rarely treated. Thus, linguistic uncertainty increases when different environmentally ethical perspectives and ways of valuing forests are considered. The objective was to compare different conceptualizations on the silvicultural systems suggested for forest management and the implications they have for conservation. We have conceptually contrasted high-intensity forestry practices with variable retention harvesting, considering different environmentally ethical perspectives and forest valuation alternatives. Results: Clear boundaries between clear-cutting, selective logging, and variable retention harvesting can be evidenced when different ethical points of view and alternatives in the human-nature relationships are considered. We have found a variety of definitions of variable retention harvesting that can be analyzed under different ethical positions. Sharply contrasting views on variable retention harvesting can be evidenced if nature is considered to be purely at human’s service or if it is conceptualized as humans co-inhabiting with nature. The latter position implies that the maintenance of ecological, evolutionary, and historical processes supported by unmanaged forest stands is a crucial step for forest management proposals based on variable retention harvesting. Conclusions: Forestry practices that are focused on forest yields and that misinterpret functional uncertainty of forest functioning would be risky. Moreover, forestry with variable retention harvesting could imply good yields with reasonable conservation management in some contexts, while it could be unacceptable in other socio-ecological contexts. The improvement of conceptual clarity on the different meanings of variable retention harvesting and the development of indicators for forest management based on the variations of this concept can reduce controversies.Fil: Galetto, Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Torres, Romina Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Martínez Pastur, Guillermo José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentin

Large-Scale Modelling of Global Food Security and Adaptation under Crop Yield Uncertainty

Concerns about future food security in the face of volatile and potentially lower yields due to climate change have been at the heart of recent discussions on adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. While there are a variety of studies trying to quantify the impact of climate change on yields, some of that literature also acknowledges the fact that these estimates are subject to substantial uncertainty. The question arises how such uncertainty will affect decision-making if ensuring food security is an explicit objective. Also, it will be important to establish, which options for adaptation are most promising in the face of volatile yields. The analysis is carried out using a stochastic version of the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) model, which is a global recursive dynamic partial equilibrium bottom-up model integrating the agricultural, bio-energy and forestry sectors with the aim to give policy advice on global issues concerning land use competition between the major land-based production sectors. The source of stochasticity is the interannual crop yield variability, making it more risky to rely on average yields and thus requiring stochastic optimization techniques. The results indicate that food security requires overproduction to meet minimum food supply constraints also in scenarios of negative yield shocks, where the additional land needed is sourced from forests and other natural land. Trade liberalization and enhanced irrigation both appear to be promising food supply stabilization, and hence land saving, mechanisms in the face of missing storage.food security, food price volatility, optimization under uncertainty, adaptation, land use change, Crop Production/Industries, Food Security and Poverty,

Landscape ecology in meeting challenges in land management: the case of Portugal

The practice of planning and management at the landscape scale has increased over the year and in some fields, such as forestry, hydrology, or biodiversity conservation, the landscape approach is already a requirement. Management at this scale is a challenging task due to the complexity of the socio-economicecological systems under consideration but mostly due to the level of uncertainty of current and future drivers of change and their effects. Theoretical foundations and methods to support management of landscapes can be found within landscape ecology, an emerging science field in the 1990’s and 2000’s but now fully established despite the diversity of perspectives. In Portugal, landscape ecology has also emerged in the 1990’s but applications in real world cases are infrequent. The goal of this work was to analyse the role of the science of landscape ecology in meeting or contributing to meet challenges in landscape management in Portugal. We analysed approaches and methods used to address the sustainable management of landscapes as well as particular case studies in forestry, fire hazard reduction, biodiversity conservation and regional planning where landscape ecology based knowledge or methods have been applied. Considering the insufficiency of applications in Portugal revealed by this work, we additionally present principles, guidelines and measures to be used in land management in general and within in the fields described above based upon the foundations and the practice in the field of landscape ecology, particularly in Portugal

Australian carbon biosequestration and bioenergy policy co-evolution: mechanisms, mitigation and convergence

The intricacies of international land-use change and forestry policy reflect the temporal, technical and political difficulty of integrating biological systems and climate change mitigation. The plethora of co-existing policies with varied technical rules, accreditation requirements, accounting methods, market registries, etc., disguise the unequal efficacies of each mechanism. This work explores the co-evolution and convergence of Australian voluntary and mandatory climate-related policies at the biosequestration-bioenergy interface. Currently, there are temporal differences between the fast-evolving and precise climate-change mechanisms, and the long-term 'permanence' sought from land use changes encouraged by biosequestration instruments. Policy convergence that favours the most efficient, appropriate and scientifically substantiated policy mechanisms is required. These policies must recognise the fundamental biological foundation of biosequestration, bioenergy, biomaterial industrial development and other areas such as food security and environmental concerns. Policy mechanisms that provide administrative simplicity, project longevity and market certainty are necessary for rural and regional Australians to cost-effectively harness the considerable climate change mitigation potential of biological systems

Building resilience into Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis [Bong.] Carr.) forests in Scotland in response to the threat of climate change

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Outside the Cap: Opportunities and Limitations of Greenhouse Gas Offsets

Explains the role of carbon offsets in providing flexibility and containing costs in a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Recommends rigorous quantification, verification, and enforcement criteria to ensure the caps' integrity