Optimizing any-aged management of mixed boreal forest under residual basal area constraints

The current trend of forest management in many countries is reduced use of clear-felling and planting, and increased use of continuous cover management. In Finland, the new forest act of 2014 made all types of cuttings equally allowable on the condition that if the post-cutting residual stand basal area is too low, the stand must be regenerated within certain time frame. Forest landowner can freely choose between even- and uneven-aged management. This study developed a method for optimizing the timing and type of cuttings without the need to categorize the management system as either even-aged or uneven-aged. A management system that does not set any requirements on the sequence of post-cutting diameter distributions is called any-aged management. Planting or sowing was used when stand basal area fell below the required minimum basal area and the amount of advance regeneration was less than required in the regulations. When the cuttings of 200 stands managed earlier with even-aged silviculture were optimized with the developed system, final felling followed by artificial regeneration was selected for almost 50% of stands. Reduction of the minimum basal area limit greatly decreased the use of artificial regeneration but improved profitability, suggesting that the truly optimal management would be to use natural regeneration in financially mature stands. The optimal type of thinning was high thinning in 97–99 % of cases. It was calculated that the minimum basal area requirement reduced the mean net present value of the stands by 12–16 % when discount rate was 3–5 %.