A Decision Context for Timber Supply Modelling

Projection of timber supply is an important component of most timber management planning systems. One of the factors limiting the improvement of such systems is the difficulty involved in clearly understanding the context of timber supply projection within management of the forest as a whole. A simple decision structure is employed in this paper to illustrate this context. Management of the timber resource is described as a subproblem of managing the forest. A timber management plan is shown to be comprised of the answers to two intricately linked questions: (1) how much to harvest over time and (2) how to schedule a sequence of activities to support the desired rate of harvest. Each of these decision processes is described briefly and the role of timber supply modelling in providing answers is examined. Although the information presented in the paper is general, it represents an initial attempt at ordering perceptions of the timber management decision environment into a more understandable form. Key words: timber management planning, timber supply modelling.