Integrating scenic and recreational amenities into numerical forest planning

This study proposes an operational way of computing the amenity value of a forest area that consists of several stands or compartments. Such a method produces an amenity index suitable for numerical optimization. With this method of computation, amenity is divided into scenic and recreation values. Scenic value of the forest depends on the visibility, area, and scenic beauty score of different compartments. Recreation value of the forest is a weighted mean of variety and the area-weighted mean recreation value of compartments. Variety is described by the total length of boundaries between distinctly different compartments. Recreation value of a compartment is the product of accessibility and recreation score of the compartment. Recreation and scenic beauty scores are computed from stand characteristics using empirical models. The study describes a complete planning system that uses the developed amenity index as a decision criterion, and relates a case study to illustrate the effect of amenity objective on choice of treatments for compartments.