Abstract
Designing Variable Retention Using Harvest and Retention Planner (HaRP) Track: Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries Management Author(s): Brent Chamberlain, Michael Meitner Modern forestry must contend with a range of management issues including sustainability, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and visual quality. To address these concerns, foresters are increasingly turning to alternative harvesting approaches such as variable retention. However, the process of manually designing variable retention at the landscape level for planning purposes is less than efficient. As an alternative, we have developed the Harvest and Retention Planner (HaRP) using ArcGIS ModelBuilder to assist in the creation of these plans. HaRP generates a harvest design that meets user-specified variable retention requirements by accepting an initial set of cut blocks and optional shapefile inputs that specify spatially explicit harvesting rules. Such a model allows forest planners to play "what-if" scenarios by facilitating the assessment of timber flow against the cumulative effects of applying various rule sets across a management unit. Brent Chamberlain University of British Columbia Forest Resource Management ####2045-2424 Main Mall Vancouver , British Columbia V6T 1Z4 CA Phone: (604) 822-6708 E-mail: chambs10@interchange.ubc.ca Michael Meitner University of British Columbia Forest Resource Management 2045-2424 Main Mall Vancouver , British Columbia V6T 1Z4 CA Phone: (604) 822-0029 Fax: (604) 822-9106 E-mail: mike.meitner@ubc.ca |
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