OPERATIONALIZATION OF BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AS A DECISION OBJECTIVE INTACTICAL FOREST PLANNING

An approach for including biological diversity in calculations of mult iobjective forest planning is described. This makes it possible to con sider biodiversity as a decision objective among multiple objectives i n tactical forest planning. Biodiversity is operationalized by decompo sing it into measurable environmental components that describe its dim ensions. The relative importance of the components is assessed via pai rwise comparisons. The relationship between the value of the component and the overall biodiversity is estimated and described for each comp onent as a subpriority function. The relationship can be nonlinear. A biodiversity index is calculated for each alternative forest plan base d on the components and their weighting, the subpriority functions, an d the predicted qualities of the forest area when implementing the pla ns. The approach is illustrated by a case study. Using this approach, the relationship between biodiversity and the other objective variable s, as well as the effects of the components of biodiversity, can be an alyzed numerically.