Addressing risks and uncertainty in forest land use modeling

The management of competing land uses is complicated by a range of issues and considerations. This is the case because of a concern for the long-term health of the earth and the obvious negative impacts of past and present human activities. Land use planning and management efforts have recognized this broader context and accordingly have devoted much care and attention to operational-level planning support. Spatial restrictions have long been recognized as central to limiting local impacts as well as ensuring landscape shape and structure irregularity. Unfortunately, planning to meet spatial restrictions may be disrupted, by fire, pests, or even on-the-ground conditions. For example, what if a fire destroys resources in a management unit that are adjacent to a unit(s) scheduled for harvest. In fact, this new opening/disruption may prevent the planned activity of any of its neighboring units. Disruptions do occur, but have rarely been addressed in any meaningful way in planning optimization problems. This paper details spatial optimization approaches to support better understanding of the range of potential outcomes when disruption and uncertainty are taken into account in land use planning involving forest resources. Application results highlight the significance of handling disruption risk and spatial data uncertainty, indicating that identifying and selecting planning alternatives that are consistent with goals and intended outcomes are a difficult task. However, improved modeling approaches are possible that better support land use decision making.