This course is designed to provide students with the theory,
techniques, and tools associated with the most common, and more
recently introduced, operations research techniques used in
developing forest plans.
Athena Title
Advanced Forest Planning
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
By the end of the semester, students should be able to describe the history and motivations behind the development of forest harvest scheduling methods.
At the end of the semester, students should be able to describe how the most common types of operations research techniques used for forest harvest scheduling conduct their search for efficient solutions and thereby address difficult management planning problems.
By the end of the semester, students should be able to estimate the trade-offs amongst using different harvest scheduling approaches and use sound judgement to support the selection of a forest harvest scheduling approach.
By the end of the semester, students should be able to evaluate the reasonableness of information produced from different harvest scheduling processes and describe the appropriate methodology to analyze the quality of outcomes produced by forest harvest scheduling methods.
By the end of the semester, students should be able to present thoughts through a common business communication tool (memo) in a manner that is understandable by forest practitioners, and present information in a numeric and graphical manner that is approachable by forest managers and decision makers.
Topical Outline
1. Forest planning and planning problem formulations
2. Spatial objectives and constraints
3. Linear programming
4. Mixed-integer programming
5. Goal programming
6. Hill-climbing search
7. Random search/ Monte Carlo simulation
8. Simulated Annealing
9. Threshold accepting
10. Tabu search
11. Genetic algorithms
12. Other minor methods used in forest planning
13. Evaluating the quality of forest planning results
14. Advanced forestry and wildlife planning problems
15. Term projects
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
