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Integrated Dual Filter framework for forest management planning : a case study in the southwest Yukon

University of British Columbia

Forest management planning is increasingly difficult due to the growing numbers of values and interests associated with forests, with climatic and socio-economic change adding further complexity. Forest planning hence can be described as a wicked problem. It cannot be tamed by linear deterministic approaches, but rather requires a more holistic approach. This study illustrated the development and testing of a planning and decision-support framework, the Integrated Dual Filter (IDF), for forest management. The IDF consists of two Filters, an Environmental and a Social Filter, and three States: Environmental representing the no-management landscape that can be used in planning as a ‗natural baseline‘ for the Desired State (an engineered landscape); the Management State represents a managed landscape to explore tactical aspects of planning and assess the feasibility of the Desired State. The IDF was tested using empirical data from the Champagne and Aishihik Traditional Territory (CATT), southwest Yukon. The CATT has recently experienced a spruce bark beetle outbreak affecting over 85% of its forests. The governance response was the development of the Strategic Forest Management Plan (SFMP). The SFMP was the starting point for the IDF-Social Filter to extract important values during working group meetings in the Yukon, deploying a ratings table to develop, judge and rank a hierarchy of criteria and sub-features for the Analytic Hierarchy Process. This resulted in five alternative forest management strategies for the long-term: manage forests for the timber industry; for multiple values and use; for fire risk reduction; for wildlife; and for the carbon industry. The IDF-Environmental Filter revealed that white spruce will still dominate the landscape after 200 years; that fire will remain an important disturbance to maintain a heterogeneous landscape; and that climate change will likely have no direct effect on tree species in the overall landscape but will be important at the site level. The conceptual simplicity of the IDF makes it a valuable decision-making support system to identify system properties, constraints and concerns (by using the Filters) in order to simulate and project the planning landscape (using the States) into the future. It allows an extension of the existing planning horizon from 20 years for the CATT SFMP to >100 years; this will better inform management, especially under consideration of climate change.

Text

2013-04-30

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/42195

Forestry

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/