Risk aversion and optimal management of an uneven-aged forest under risk of windthrow: A Markov decision process approach

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Couture, Stéphane | Cros, Marie-Josée | Sabbadin, Régis

Edité par CCSD ; Elsevier -

Forests are increasingly threatened by windthrows but those com-posed of uneven-aged stand plots are generally less impacted bytheir effects. As a consequence, the management of such forestsshould be based on a joint management of all their differentuneven-aged stand plots. This article determines the optimal man agement regime of uneven-aged forests under risk of windthrowand furthermore takes the risk preferences of the forest owner intoaccount. This study analyzes optimal harvesting of uneven-agedstand plots by applying a Markov decision process (MDP) frame-work using an economic description of uneven-aged forestry. Twomanagement types are considered: the joint uneven-aged forestmanagement model in which the forest owner jointly managesall the different stand plots, and the independent uneven-agedforest management model that assumes that the forest ownerindependently manages each plot of the forest. The MDP frame-work is applied to a non-industrial private forest owner located innortheastern France. First, we show that the forest owner tends toconverge toward a forest structure that is close to a normal forestin the joint uneven-aged forest management model. Second, wefind that the independent uneven-aged forest management modelpoorly approximates the optimal multi-stand harvesting policy.Third, and more surprisingly, the levels of windthrow probability changes considered have little influence on the optimal harvestingstrategies of the forest owner. Lastly, in contrast, the forest owner’srisk aversion is shown to have a strong influence on the optimalpolicy.

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