Methodology of Systems Analysis in Sustainable Forest Management

The article is dedicated to forest systems management in Russia in conditions of increasing discrepancy between decreasing forest areas, degradation of their state and steady growth of need for different functions of forests. Inadequacy of managerial solutions is determined by a variety of problems, among which is lack of systems analysis of the problem of extremely intensive and disorganized timber logging in conditions of inefficient reproduction of trees and low productivity of forests. To switch to sustainable forest management a methodology of sequential analysis of maintenance and reproduction of forest systems has been developed. Complexity growth of highly sophisticated forest systems management, which is characterized by hierarchy and emergence, requires the use of systems analyses of certain subsystems within the structure of forest system at the level of their interaction and relations among them. The forest system structure is represented in the form of large subsystems according to their main objectives: creation of highly efficient and cost effective timber stand, conservation of biological diversity and useful features of forest systems, maintenance of social and economic functions of forests. For overall evaluation of forest systems management, efficiency criteria and indices targeted at final result have been used. At the practical level, these criteria reflect the required changes in the forest system on the whole in simplified form and serve as baseline for intensive techniques of forest systems management. Forests reproduction is determined by a large quantity of natural and anthropogenic factors, among which preparation of soil, quality of seeds, production and planting of seedlings, crop cultivation, felling etc. Each factor should also be considered as a subsystem with corresponding elements and relations among them. For opportune adoption of measures, efficiency evaluation of appropriate activities in the processes of constant dynamics of forest areas is necessary, which allows us to create information basis for predicting short-term and long-term forests reproduction. The influence of each factor can be estimated using orgraphs technique, where the nodes of the graph are the studied indices and the arcs reflect intensity of influence change of one index on the other. A variety of models reflecting the essence and process conditions of the forest system will serve as baseline for building a mathematical model with subsequent switch to digital models.