Development of an economically sustainable and balanced tactical forest management plan: a case study in Quebec

Abstract

In Canada, most of the forests are publicly owned and forest products companies depend on timber licenses issued by the provincial governments for their wood supplies. According to the Sustainable Forest Development Act effective in the province of Quebec since April 2013, the government is responsible for harvest area selection and timber allocation to companies. This is a complex tactical planning decision with important impacts on downstream economic activities. Moreover, to avoid high grading of forest resources and to determine a sustainable tactical plan that ensures a stable level of availability, quality, and cost of supply over several years, it is necessary to take these criteria into consideration simultaneously during the planning process. We propose a mixed-integer nonlinear goal-programming formulation while employing Nadir theory as a reliable scaling technique to model this multi-objective planning problem. The model is solved by a linearization approach for a real case in the province of Quebec. The proposed solution method enables us to obtain good-quality solutions for relatively large cases. Results show that the proposed model outperforms conventional cost-minimization planning strategy by ensuring a more balanced use of wood supply and costs for all stakeholders over a longer period.