UNCERTAINTY AND FOREST LAND-USE ALLOCATION IN BRITISH-COLUMBIA - VAGUE PRIORITIES AND IMPRECISE COEFFICIENTS

Recently, increasing weight has been placed on nontimber values in for est management. Both the multiple objectives and the parameters that s upport decision making in forestry are often imprecise and vague. In t his paper, the concepts of fuzzy set theory are explained and then app lied to the problem of allocating public forestland on Vancouver Islan d among competing land uses. Two principal sources of fuzziness are id entified-those related to uncertainty in classification (specification of management objectives) and those related to uncertainty concerning how actions affect objectives (imprecise technical coefficients). By comparing the results of classical and fuzzy decision models, we concl ude that the latter approach can be judged an improvement over the for mer. The fuzzy land-use allocation appears to be more consistent with the political decision making process, which relies on consultation an d consensus-seeking among various interest groups, that has evolved in British Columbia, The analysis also yields insights into the robustne ss of outcomes and suggests priority areas for further research.