Economic and biological compatibility of timber and wildlife production: an illustrative use of production possibilities frontier.

Abstract

Considering multiple objectives is an important aspect of modern forestry, but quantifying the trade-offs among commodity and noncommodity resources remains an obstacle to effi- cient forest planning. We illustrate how production possibilities frontier (PPF) methodol- ogy can be used for multiple-objective analysis, focusing on trade-offs between timber production and several noncommodity resources as functions of timber harvest strategy. To do this, we modeled forest structure as a consequence of 6 silvicultural strategies that differed in harvest intensity and we used existing resource models to project responses of selected wildlife habitat attributes, resistance of forest stands to insects and fire, and long- term financial returns. Graphing resource outputs against one another illustrates the nature and extent of the trade-offs among our silvicultural alternatives. To illustrate the utility of PPF methodology, we assumed a priori that all of our noncommodity resources would exhibit incompatible relationships with timber harvesting. However, incompatible relationships were rare. Instead, competitive and complementary relationships were com- mon in our long-term projections. Conapetitive and complementary relationships are defined by continuous trade-off functions that can lead to optimum management solu- tions with multiple outputs. Knowing the PPF relationship helps quantify biological and economic trade-offs from silvicultural designed modifications to stands. Our results demonstrate that management costs exert a substantial influence on the feasibility of any strategy regardless of its biological merit and that optimizing between timber and non- commodity resources would require explicit knowledge of their relative values.