| Over time, the impacts, both spatial and temporal, of scheduled management activities on forest structure are usually quite subtle and difficult to determine. Management of forests for a variety of purposes is increasingly complex. Many managers of public lands are experiencing a reduction in the land area which can be managed for a full range of uses. Private landowners are also faced with increased public concern for the way in which their forestlands are managed.;The resource manager's ability to analyze complex issues and to predict the outcome of alternative strategies is limited, especially when management objectives involve different concerns, such as timber, wildlife, water protection, and the managed forest is large in size where spatial and temporal impacts of scheduled treatments occur. This study attempts to build a bridge between forest managers and wildlife biologists by providing a visual portrayal as well as an analytical tool for assessing the spatial and temporal impacts of timber management activities.;In this research, the architecture for a spatial decision support system (SDSS) for timber and wildlife management was proposed. A prototype SDSS (EPLAN), based on the proposed architecture, was developed by integrating geographic information systems, decision support systems, and expert systems techniques. Though further refinement of EPLAN is needed, its flexibility and usefulness in helping managers/planners deal with complex management planning problems was illustrated by an application to a parcel of New York state forest land.;EPLAN was demonstrated to several groups of experienced forest resource managers and evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively by applying different statistical techniques. A five part evaluation instrument was used in the process to obtain potential users' perceptions of such systems, to identify benefits that potential users expect from a decision support tool such as the one developed in the study, and eventually to determine the usefulness of the proposed spatial decision support system.;The evaluation results demonstrated that the EPLAN design is a good concept. The features of the system can assist forest resource managers in improving decision making when facing complex spatial and temporal related decisions, better utilizing standard inventory data, understanding of spatial related problems, increasing the depth and scope of alternative exploration. By using decision support tools such as EPLAN during a forest planning process, the effectiveness of decision making could be improved. The findings of the study will help refine the system and could provide guidelines for future spatial decision support system development. |
