Integrated Forest Vegetation Management: Stages and Development Prospects

Abstract

When enterprises of the timber industry complex form protective forest plantations along linear infrastructure facilities, the problem of subsequent spontaneous reproduction of tree and shrub vegetation arises, which leads to disorder in the territories of the above facilities and creates a threat to the safety of their operation. In many foreign countries, work to maintain the territories of linear infrastructure facilities in a standard state is carried out in strict accordance with certain methods of conceptual management of vegetation growth. At the same time, such management methods are practically unknown both to the domestic scientific community dealing with the issues of protective afforestation, and to those who make decisions on the need to influence unwanted trees and shrubs. The purpose of the study was to study and analyze systemic methods for managing unwanted tree and shrub vegetation growing on the territories of linear infrastructure facilities in order to improve the quality and efficiency of its removal, as well as to make recommendations for the proper maintenance of these territories. Cluster analysis of world research trends in forest vegetation management revealed 3 major areas associated with: a decrease or increase in species richness and diversity of vegetation, as well as the inadmissibility of its subsequent renewal; methods and means of influencing vegetation, including the benefits of vegetation management; ecological and aesthetic consequences of vegetation management, as well as public perception of the results of such management. The established principles for the application of the integrated vegetation management system (Integrated Vegetation Management: IVM), which is widespread in the world, are necessarily taken into account by organizations responsible for managing various protected zones and right-of-way. The most convenient for characterizing a selective approach to the management of unwanted vegetation growing in the territories of linear infrastructure facilities is the phrase «Integrated forest vegetation management». As the basic structure of the IVM system, the model proposed in 2005 by Nowak and Ballard is used, which provides for the implementation of a complete systems approach when influencing vegetation. It is inappropriate to combine in one step (the critical phase of this model) the monitoring of the potential effect of the impact on unwanted vegetation and the assessment of this impact. With further improvement of the IVM system, it is necessary to create a set of clearly defined and at the same time measurable indicators that fully reflect the achieved (or not achieved) effect from the impact on unwanted vegetation. It is shown that in order to introduce protective afforestation into domestic practice, IVM systems should not be a separate vegetation management tool, but a combination of management approaches, including not only the assessment of a plot of a linear infrastructure facility, but also subsequent control and determination of the quality of the normative maintenance of this plot.