Modeling forest landscape change in the Missouri Ozarks under alternative management practices

We used a spatially explicit landscape model, LANDIS, to simulate the effec ts of five management alternatives on a 3216 ha forest landscape in southea st Missouri, USA. We compared management alternatives among two intensities of even-aged management with clearcutting, uneven-aged management with gro up selection harvest, a mixture of even- and uneven-aged management, and no harvesting. Anticipated disturbances by windthrow and wildfire were includ ed in the 100-year simulations across the landscape. The uneven-aged, even- aged long rotation, and mixed harvest regimes were similar to one another i n total area in each forest size class, timber volume produced and volume o f wood on the forest floor. However, they varied greatly in quantity of edg e habitat and in the extent of the mature forest habitat free from edge eff ects. The intensive even-aged harvest regime and the no-harvest regime prod uced the greatest volume of timber and the greatest volume of down wood, re spectively. This model provides a quantitative flamework to simultaneously explore multiple factors that affect landscape-scale management decisions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.