Optimizing forest land management under overlapping multiple resource tenures

森林公司面临的问题变得更加复杂，原因有几个：(1)环境资源的管理涉及对不同时间和空间尺度的过程的影响；(2)保护和提高许多环境价值需要优化空间配置，因此涉及非常大的问题；(3)多个价值的管理涉及一整套更复杂的约束和目标；(4)缺乏信息(例如缺乏准确的数据)和知识(例如长期生物影响的不确定性)增加了明确对待风险和不确定性的重要性。除了面临复杂的营林战略选择外，许多森林公司还必须应对“重叠”保有权人对其森林安排的干扰，这些保有权人有权开采同一森林上的其他资源。我们的研究计划的目标是开发模型，帮助行业和政府找到最优的管理战略，明确考虑到规范森林运营的制度安排。我们计划开发更有效的算法，利用新的机构设计(例如分区)来确定土地利用活动的最佳空间分配。我们还计划改进这些模型，以包括重大自然过程(火灾、演替)的潜在影响。许多森林公司面临的一个重要问题是所有权重叠的问题。政府经常将林地上不同资源的使用权提供给不同的公司。例如，不同的公司被分配了不同资源的权利(例如林业和石油和天然气)。不同的公司在同一块土地上开采不同的资源，如果不进行协调，可能会导致冲突和严重浪费。我们计划模拟森林公司在不同重叠保有权制度下面临的决策，并探索各种合作的联合规划选择。我们将考虑各种替代分配机制(成本分摊机制)，以确定在保有权持有人之间公平分配收益和成本。这些模型将通过安大略省、不列颠哥伦比亚省和艾伯塔省的一系列案例研究进行测试。

The problems facing forest companies have become significantly more complex for several reasons: (1) management for environmental resources involves impacts on processes with varying time and spatial scales; (2) protection and enhancement of many environmental values require optimization of spatial configurations hence involving very large problems; (3) the management for multiple values involves more complex sets of constraints and objectives; and (4) lack of information (e.g. lack of precise data) and knowledge (e.g. uncertainty with respect to long term biological impacts) increase the importance of treating risk and uncertainty explicitly. In addition to facing complex choices of silvicultural strategies, many forest companies must cope with interference in their forest arrangement from "overlapping" tenure holders which have rights to exploit other resources on the same forest. The objective of our research program is to develop models that will assist both industry and government to find optimal management strategies that take explicit account of the institutional arrangements that regulate forest operations. We plan to develop more efficient algorithms to identify optimal spatial assignment of land use activities using new institutional designs (e.g. zoning). We also plan on refining these models to include the potential impacts of significant natural processes (fire, succession). An important issue facing many forest companies is the issue of overlapping tenures. Governments often provide the rights of using different resources on forest lands to different companies. For example, different companies are assigned rights to different resources (e.g. forestry and oil and gas). The exploitation of different resources on the same land by different companies can lead to conflict and significant waste if done without coordination. We plan to model the decisions facing forest companies under different overlapping tenure regimes and explore a variety of cooperative joint planning options. We will consider a variety of alternative distributional mechanisms (cost-sharing mechanisms) to identify a fair distribution of payoffs and costs among the tenure holders. The models will be tested through a sequence of case studies in Ontario, BC and Alberta.