Selecting intensive timber management zones as part of a forest land allocation strategy

Establishing zones to be intensively managed for timber production is proposed by some in Canada as one way to meet the numerous and diverse objectives for which society expects forests to be managed. Concentrating timber production in such zones could make possible the expansion of protected and other areas where non-timber objectives prevail. The jury is out as to the desirability of such a land allocation strategy relative to the alternative of integrated management where low intensity timber management is practised and multiple timber and non-timber objectives are sought from the same lands. In the event some agencies opt for a zoned forest land allocation, a critical issue becomes where to situate the intensive timber management zones. To help address this issue, we present a simple and flexible quantitative process for ranking candidate areas based on their suitability for intensive timber management. The framework involves: (1) defining candidate areas, (2) specifying indicators for economic, ecological, and social criteria of suitability and scoring each candidate relative to those indicators, and (3) ranking candidates using a composite index that factors in all suitability indicators. The process is sufficiently flexible to have application in any jurisdiction, but we demonstrate its use for the 3 million ha of Crown forest in New Brunswick. We conduct several exploratory analyses designed to provide insight into selection of suitable intensive timber management zones. These analyses include controlling the geographic dispersion of candidates, quantifying sensitivity of candidate rankings to differential weighting of suitability criteria, and identifying those candidates that consistently score well across a variety of criteria weightings. Use of the ranking framework to conduct such analysis could prove of significant value in the process of selecting intensive timber management zones.