A heuristic for landscape management

Abstract

The development of landscape ecology has stressed out the importance of spatial and sequential relationships as explanations to forest stand dynamics, and for other natural ambiences. This presentation offers a specific design that introduces spatial considerations into forest planning with the idea of regulating fragmentation and connectivity in commercial forest stands when these stands are subject to silvicultural regimes for conversion to a condition similar to pristine. El Llanito, a group of forest tracts privately owned in Atenguillo, Jalisco, Mexico, is under a forest plan that will serve as an example of landscape management. In this plan, the harvest schedule from SICODESI, a traditional Mexican forest management method, is used as the initial feasible solution in a heuristic that introduces successive changes in prescription, and timing of treatment, to improve the solution features, considering fragmentation and connectivity specs, and the proportional balance of successional stand structures. Results in the example case show a clear trend towards a more balanced distribution of successional stages, and a harvest level comparable to historic levels. There is a slight decline in fragmentation and connectivity goals, much of which can be explained by the sizable amount of area damaged by pests and fire in the previous cycle. This outcome is a welcomed improvement over the features displayed by the SICODESI solution, which could have been chosen if landscape management were not available.

Parent Publication

• Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium: Unifying Knowledge for Sustainability in the Western Hemisphere

Citation

Mendoza, Martín Alfonso B.; Zepeta, Jesús S.; Fajardo, Juan José A. 2006. A heuristic for landscape management. In: Aguirre-Bravo, C.; Pellicane, Patrick J.; Burns, Denver P.; and Draggan, Sidney, Eds. 2006. Monitoring Science and Technology Symposium: Unifying Knowledge for Sustainability in the Western Hemisphere Proceedings RMRS-P-42CD. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 829-831