A forest planning model for continuous employment in a forested village with primarily young stands in Korea

This paper presents a practical forest planning approach for continuous forest-based employment in a forested village with primarily young stands. The model is designed to find the practice level for continuous forest employment which embraces both the goal of maximizing the total forest employment and the constraint of maintaining its annual balance, considering forest size and condition, and budget available for forest practice. Through controlling the practice level with the help of a desired employment effect that contributes to allocating forest practices equally to each plan year, a marginal practice level can be found under which any practice level fulfills the goal and constraints. The potential practice area, which is determined by forest area, stand age, and practice schedule, contributes to determining the area silviculturally available for forest practice. Our forest planning model is focused on the planning of young forests which are not expected to yield merchantable products in the near term. The model can also be characterized by landscape-level forest planning in which stand-level practices are planned for achieving a forest-level goal of continuous forest employment. Thus, the model can serve as a basic planning tool for maintaining healthy forests as well as continuous forest employment in young forest areas, where forest-level goals are predicated on stand level practices.