Publications

In forest management planning emphasis is being placed not only on timber production but also on values such as recreation, amenities, wildlife and the role of forests in securing sustained water resources. In the mountainous terrain of Austria, forests additionally provide protection against soil erosion and natural hazards such as avalanches and rockfall. Forest managers are challenged by the task to transform these forest management objectives into silvicultural prescriptions for a particular stand, when considering appropriate future species mixtures or silviculture measurements.

Identification of management objectives at the stand level and evaluation of management practices which best meet these forest level goals require the development and application of models. Spatial decision support systems (SDSS) can be a valuable tool for analysis of such complex spatial decision problems in multiple purpose forest resource planning.

However, developing SDSS requires the cooperation of decision analysts and computer programmers. Quite often the lack of mutual understanding of other’s tools and methods, create communication problems that result in time-delays and errors. To overcome such limitations MapModels was developed. MapModels is a new and flexible tool for explorative data analysis and modeling of spatial decision problems.