Assessing ecological values with dependent explanatory variables in multi-criteria forest ecosystem management

Multi-criteria forest ecosystem management considers the overall evaluation of alternative management plans with respect to objectives, which typically deal with both ecological and economic issues. One approach is to make the evaluations quantitatively so that analyses based on trade-offs between decision criteria can be carried out. This requires that the ecological objectives should also be assessed numerically. The present paper studies the numerical assessment of ecological values of forest ecosystem management in the context of multi-criteria planning. In a case study concerning planning applied to a forest area in Kainuu, eastern Finland, the ecological values were described by the amount of old forest, the amount of dead wood and the amount of deciduous trees. Compared to previous models, recently developed statistical modelling techniques were applied to handle the assessment process. The advantages of the statistical approach included that the potential interactions between the ecological variables can be taken into account. The case study results showed statistically significant interactions between the amount of old forest and the amount of dead wood suggesting that the proposed model is of practical importance for multi-criteria forest ecosystem management.