Author Description

Strategic planning is important in forest management. However, it has never been described clearly in literature. In this study a framework for strategic planning was developed and based on this a STrategic Alternatives Generating System (STAGES) to support decision making in strategic planning for forest management. This strategic planning consists of deciding on zoning, future forest and transition management. STAGES consists of a zoning model (which addresses the zoning decision problem that is formulated as a Quadratic Assignment Problem and is solved by Simulated Annealing) and a management model (which addresses the desired future forest decision problem and the transition management decision problem simultaneously; these are formulated as a linear programming problem). STAGES was tested in a case study. The models which constitute STAGES can also be applied in natural resource management planning in general, regional planning and land use planning.