Modeling forest landscape change in the Missouri Ozarks under alternative management practices

We used a spatially explicit landscape model, , to simulate the effects of five management alternatives on a 3216 ha forest landscape in southeast Missouri, USA. We compared management alternatives among two intensities of even-aged management with clearcutting, uneven-aged management with group selection harvest, a mixture of even- and uneven-aged management, and no harvesting. Anticipated disturbances by windthrow and wildfire were included in the 100-year simulations across the landscape. The uneven-aged, even-aged long rotation, and mixed harvest regimes were similar to one another in total area in each forest size class, timber volume produced and volume of wood on the forest floor. However, they varied greatly in quantity of edge habitat and in the extent of the mature forest habitat free from edge effects. The intensive even-aged harvest regime and the no-harvest regime produced the greatest volume of timber and the greatest volume of down wood, respectively. This model provides a quantitative flamework to simultaneously explore multiple factors that affect landscape-scale management decisions.