Remote sensing and GIS are complementary technologies that, when combined, enable improved monitoring, mapping, and management of forest resources (Franklin 2001). The information that supports forest management is stored primarily in the form of forest inventory databases within a GIS environment. A forest inventory is a survey of the location, composition, and distribution of forest resources...

Temperate forest soils store globally significant amounts of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Understanding how soil pools of these two elements change in response to disturbance and management is critical to maintaining ecosystem services such as forest productivity, greenhouse gas mitigation, and water resource protection. Fire is one of the principal disturbances acting on forest soil C and N st...

Forests of the coastal plain region of the southern United States are unique in their productivity, biodiversity, and economic value. However, natural and anthropogenic disturbances may trigger forest age structure and spatial distribution variation. Detecting and predicting tree species distribution patterns can help to understand the dynamics of disturbances in order to develop adequate fores...

Forest management planners require analytical tools to assess the effects of alternative strategies on the sometimes disparate benefits from forests such as timber production and wildlife habitat. We assessed the spatial patterns of alternative management strategies by linking two models that were developed for different purposes. We used a linear programming model (Spectrum) to optimize timber...

Spatial and temporal scheduling of forest management activities is becoming increasingly important due to recent developments in environmental regulations, goals and policies. A forest planning model was developed to select activities for stands in a forested area (178,000 ha), from a set of stand-centric optimal prescriptions, to best meet a higherlevel landscape objective. The forest-level ma...

This case study provides an overview of the process and effects of forest certification in Estonia. The discussion regarding forest certification was initiated in Estonia in the mid-1990s as environmental NGOs started to highlight the potential benefits of certification. The issue was discussed further in the working groups of the National Forest Development Program, bringing it to the attentio...

A two-level Hierarchical Timber Allocation model was developed that iteratively negotiates medium-term (sustainable forest management) decisions with operational (lumber production) plans. At the medium-term level, a multi-criteria timber allocation model optimally allocates forest land units, called stewardship units, to different forest products companies based on five sustainability criteria...