A study of forest management plans based on single-objective optimization

Abstract

The global decline in forest area and massive greenhouse gas emissions have increased concern about the scale of forest carbon sinks, but the social value of forests as a source of timber and of forests themselves for tourism is also a focus of attention. The balance between forest carbon sinks and other values becomes a research question in this paper. We propose a forest management plan for forest managers by developing a carbon sink model and a forest management decision model. First, we developed a carbon sequestration model to determine how much carbon dioxide can be sequestered by the forest and its products over time. Then, we developed a single-objective optimization model with the goal of maximizing the amount of carbon sequestered. To develop a forest management plan, we selected six influencing factors: carbon storage, forest trees and their products, biodiversity, soil water storage, climate regulation, and landscape value, and then used hierarchical analysis to determine the influence weights of each factor, and then built a forest management decision model based on the single-objective optimization model. For specific forests, we initialize the model with specific parameters of the influencing factors and determine the transition points so that the model can be suitable for diverse forests and make a targeted management plan.