Forest Management and Planning

Chapter 13. Hierarchical System for Planning and Scheduling Management

Activities
1. Operational planning related to commercial thinning operations. You have recently been hired
as a forester for a timber company in western Washington. Your main responsibility is to plan
and implement all the commercial thinning activities across the land the company owns
(200,000 acres). Higher-level plans call for a certain amount of volume to be thinned from a
certain amount of land each year. A general thinning prescription is applied to stands that are
25 to 30 years old. Discuss the various aspects of your new job that might be included in a
monthly operational plan.
Operational plans indicate where and when the activities should occur, and how the activities
will be carried out. For thinning operations these may involve determining the appropriate
location and use of harvesting machinery and logging personnel, the primary transportation
routes of wood from the stump to a landing, and the various secondary transportation routes
of wood from the landing to a mill or wood yard. In addition, tracking the costs and prices
would seem necessary as well as the volume thinned, since the latter relates to the higherlevel plans.
2. Operational planning related to wildlife habitat improvement. As a natural resource manager for
a military base in the southern United States, you are charged with developing a certain
amount of red cockaded woodpecker habitat each year. Based on the guidelines provided in
Chapter 12, Section III, Part A, what operational planning issues would you expect to
encounter over the course of a year?
Part C is the location of this information, rather than Part A of Section III in Chapter 12.
In developing habitat, one would assume that we would be taking stands of trees that are not
currently considered habitat, and manipulating them to the conditions reflective of optimal
habitat. In many of these cases this would require thinnings or partial cuts to reduce the basal
area and stocking of pine trees to the desired specifications. As in the previous question, this
would require determining the appropriate location and use of harvesting machinery and
logging personnel, the primary transportation routes of wood from the stump to a landing, and
the various secondary transportation routes of wood from the landing to a mill or wood yard. In
addition, some mid-story control of undesirable vegetation may be required, and this would
necessitate contracting and managing crews who will perform chemical or mechanical
treatments. In other cases, activities may consist of manipulating the species composition of a
site. The timing and placement of these activities would not only relate to the higher level
goals of the organization, but also be a function of the availability of woods crews, market
conditions, and weather conditions.
3. Forest planning processes. The organization that you work for in central Maine utilizes a forest
plan that describes for the land managers the areas to be harvested each year, the volume
expected from each harvest, and the potential effects of the plan on wildlife habitat and water
quality values. The plan provided to the field personnel is one or two years in length, but you
are aware that it is modeled for 50 years to determine the effects of harvesting on long-term
sustainable wood supplies. How would you describe this type of planning process? Why?
The modeling of wood supply over a long period of time to determine sustainability is a
strategic planning process. However, since the areas to be harvested each year are identified
for the field personnel, one or more of the following has occurred:

1. A strategic planning process using strata-based data was used to assess the sustainability
of wood supplies, and a tactical planning process was used to disaggregate the solution and
allocate it to specific areas.
2. A combined strategic and tactical planning process was used where the basic data were the
specific areas to treat with activities, yet the processes looked far into the future to assess
wood supply sustainability.
4. Selecting a planning process. The owner of a tract of land in Wisconsin is interested in having
you develop a forest plan for their property. After a brief discussion with the landowner, you
determine the following: (1) they are interested in a long-term sustainable harvest from
uneven-aged forests, (2) they want some flexibility in locating the harvests, therefore are not
interested in a site-specific schedule, just a ballpark figure (volume and area) to work from, (3)
though they desire a 50-year plan to ensure sustainable harvests, they are most interested in
the costs and revenues over the next 10 years. Given sufficient data to develop the forest
plan, which approach described in this chapter would you select?
A strategic planning process would suffice here. The resources can be aggregated into
strata, which will allow the modeling of long-term harvests, provide flexibility in locating the
harvests, and allow them to assess costs and revenues.
If the landowner later indicated that they are very concerned about deer habitat quality,
specifically as measured using a spatial wildlife habitat quality model, would your choice of
approach change? If so, then how would it change?
At this point, spatial data are needed to represent various habitat conditions across the
landscape. The use of strata are probably not appropriate, and the use of stands probably
is appropriate. The process would be more reflective of a tactical planning process,
although it could be designed to model of long-term harvests, and allow one to assess
costs and revenues. The landowner may lose some flexibility in assigning harvests, since
the timing and placement of harvests would affect habitat quality.
5. The hierarchy of forest planning. Assume you are a manager of a large area of land in central
Virginia, and assume that you are interviewing recent graduates for an entry-level field forester
position. During the interview, you describe for the candidates the types of management
activities that the new employee will be performing. In addition to prescribed burning, timber
inventory, and some harvest layout activities, the position includes supporting the strategic
and tactical planning processes of your organization, and includes the direct use of
operational planning processes. Since these planning processes may overlap somewhat, and
since decisions at one level affect opportunities at another, the goals and objectives of the
planning processes may be a little confusing to the students you are interviewing. To help
clarify matters, develop a short, one-page memorandum that describes how the three
processes differ, and how the new employee will eventually become involved.
In a student's memorandum, they should at least cover these points:
Strategic planning involves long-term (one or more rotations) forecasts of the economic,
ecological, and social consequences of selective courses of action. Strata (aggregations of
vegetative conditions) are generally used to represent landscape features.
Tactical plans are developed for a longer period of time (1 to 20 years), and help managers
understand how to implement a strategic plan, and incorporate aspects of management that
were not recognized in the strategic plan. The outcomes reported from strategic plans are
spatially disaggregated here, in an attempt to locate the landscape position of activities,
habitats, and forest conditions suggested. For example, harvest area size or shape, riparian

management areas, and wildlife habitat patches may all be recognized spatially at this level of
planning. The results of tactical planning feed into operational planning processes.
Operational plans involve daily, weekly, or monthly goals, and involve determining the specific
locations, crews, and equipment to implement activities.
In one way or another, the field forester will be associated with the planning processes. They
will either be implementing the plan at the operational level, or influencing strategic or tactical
plan development by providing planners the appropriate data and assumptions.