Biological / Physical Modeling-Once data concerning the forest has been gathered , techniques must be used to estimate current timber and non-timber values of the forest (standing timber volumes, wildlife numbers, fodder, etc.) and to describe the dynamic nature of the forest and its values (timber growth and yield over time, wildlife dynamics, erosion rates, etc.) as a result of natural processes and human actions.
Integrated Forest Planning - Besides information concerning the forest and its dynamic nature, managers must plan the actions that are required to be undertaken in order to achieve the goals of the Forest Service. An important consideration is the fact that, for the foreseeable future, no one monolithic model will be able to produce a realistic, implementable, optimal solution for all planning levels (strategic, tactical and operational) in one iteration. Instead, given the fact that a multitude of objectives and constraints must be analyzed over a number of levels, across a number of functional divisions and over several time horizons, an iterative, trade-off approach should be considered as most appropriate.
Forest Operations Monitoring -The
monitoring of production parameters (timber and non-timber forest production;
social costs, benefits and infrastructure requirements; economic costs;
revenues; human and non-human resource requirements) is essential to ensure that
plans are being properly implemented, that assumptions made in the planning
process are valid, and that control measures or re-planning are not required.
The functional areas addressed by the FMIS are detailed in Fig. 2
Fig 2: Functional areas addressed by the FMIS
It has been developed to provide decision support for integrated long, medium and short-term forest management. The various components of our IFMS are linked in such a way that managers are able to produce the set of plans that are best overall (across all relevant time horizons and organizational divisions), then control activities to ensure that the plan is properly implemented. The standard components of our IFMS include:
- The Forest Inventory System (FIS) stores and processes forestry information and produces estimates of current and projected volume and value estimates of timber and non-timber products.The Forest Inventory System has been developed to provide managers with up-to-date information about their forest resources based upon forest surveys.
- Strategic Planning Module formulates the optimum long-term forest management strategy and reports the optimum mix and schedule of activities, while respecting constraints such as wood flows, capital, manpower, and environmental considerations.
- The Forest Maximizer, is an optimization-based package for the long-term, strategic planning of forests and forest estates. It provides managers with the optimal nature, amount and timing of major forest management activities over the life of the analysis (usually incorporating one or more forest rotations).
- Tactical Planning Module (TOPM) is an optimization-based decision support system for developing optimum multi-year, multi-season forest operating plans to produce the lowest costs or highest profits over the entire range of forest activities.
- The Forest Operations Planning Decision Support System (DSS) is designed to help managers create effective and efficient operating plans, budgets and schedules.
- Cost Tracking System allows managers to monitor actual
operations to ensure that costs, production and resource usage are in line
with the plan produced by the Operational Planning Module.
IFMS:
- Enables integrated planning across multiple planning levels, departments, and time horizons.
- Provides decision support environment for major decisions across multiple levels of management.
- Provides the ability to plan, control, document and justify sustainable forest management actions.
- Takes into account economic, environmental and social factors.
- Can be linked to GIS, accounting systems and other
MIS.
Conclusion
The critical
issues that need to be addressed while implementing an FMIS are:
- Linking the planning at all levels ( strategic, tactical and operational), and providing facilities to reflect the changes in the actual situations and their implications for the plans
- Providing a framework for the integration of GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS to resolve the problem of non-availability of the latest maps or spatial information
- Helping managers / decision makers to effectively achieve the social, environmental and economic objectives of the Forest Department’s Plan in a multi -objective decision - making environment.
- Planning for and ensuring the availability of trained people during the entire life cycle of the FMIS.(Imparting training to the FD staff can take 5 to 8 years).
- Being aware and sensitive to the fact that the
complete implementation of all aspects of an integrated FMIS can span around
10 to 15 years, depending on the size of a Forest Department (Resource
allocation for people, equipment, data creation and its periodic updation and
validation, training, maintenance and repair, upgrades and software support
should take cognizance of such a time horizon).