Strategien zur Minimierung von Opportunitätskosten der Totholzbereitstellung

Abstract

Besides the conventional use of wood for construction and heating, further ecosystem services of forests gain more and more importance, such as environmental protection and social welfare. Due to its long-term production, forest management is faced with additional biophysical and economic risks when providing these services. This article assesses how ecosystem services can be included in an economic planning model using as an example the provision of deadwood in commercial forests. For a private forest enterprise in Bavaria (Germany), different deadwood targets were combined with different grading variants and included in the optimization approach as side conditions. By comparing the different optimal solutions for different deadwood targets it was possible to derive the costs of an optimal strategy. The results indicate that costs widely vary not only depending on the amount, but also on the grading types of deadwood (entire tree, strong timber, branches), the tree species (softwood, hardwood), and the given time horizon to reach the deadwood target. As a conclusion for practitioners we derive that ecological and economic objectives can be combined in an optimal way by the examined enterprise if deadwood is provided from whole hardwood trees and if the goal does not have to be reached in a short time.