The roles of a decision support system in applying forest ecosystem management in Northeast China

Forest ecosystems provide a variety of services and forest ecosystem management (FEM) is an effective approach to maximize the services. Because of the complexity of forest ecosystems, the applications of FEM can be facilitated with decision support systems (DSS) that recognize and incorporate ecological and socio-economic variables. With the rapid development of computation and information technologies, DSS have been advanced in many ways. Traditional forest management within a forestry unit in China is planned on a yearly basis. The planning itself remains primarily a verbal concept as there are no quantitative decision-support tools available to translate the concept into forest management actions. For the purposes of FEM at the management level, a forest management DFF, FORESTAR®, has been developed under a framework of geographic information system (GIS) and forest models. The paper explained the intelligent modeling mechanisms and demonstrated how the applications of FEM can be strengthened with the applications of FORESTAR®.