New CEF paper analyses the status and trends in spatial forest planning

Researchers from the ForChange group at the Forest Research Centre (Centro de Estudos Florestais – CEF) have carried out an extensive analysis of the status and trends over the past two decades in spatial forest planning.

“An Updated Review of Spatial Forest Planning: Approaches, Techniques, Challenges, and Future Directions” is the new review article by Emin Baskent, a collaborator of the ForChange group, and Professor JosĂ© Borges (ForChange group), on spatial forest planning, namely approaches, techniques, challenges and future directions in the area of spatial forest planning.

The spatial forest planning concept has evolved as an essential component of the forest management planning process. The development of both exact and heuristic modeling techniques as analytical solution techniques have seen significant progress in application to spatial forest planning over the last two decades. In this article, the authors identify the persistent challenges to using exact modeling techniques to address large real problems with multiple ecosystems services.

The classification of the number of publications according to the class (a) and types of methods (b) used. “Exact/heuristic” classification refers to the papers that either combine exact and heuristic methods or uses both methods

The article also emphasises that determining the optimal combination and values of heuristic parameters and assessing the quality of heuristic solutions remains a central challenge. The authors also highlight the potential of artificial intelligence to overcome computational obstacles to the application of both exact and heuristic techniques to spatially explicit forest management planning.

The article “An Updated Review of Spatial Forest Planning: Approaches, Techniques, Challenges, and Future Directions” was published in the journal Current Forestry Reports and can be found here.

The distribution of the number of publications according to the ecosystem services