2020 Volume 19 Article ID: 19.005
The existing exact optimization techniques for spatially constrained harvest scheduling problems under area restriction are unable to solve spatial aggregation issues that involve the creation of a set of clusters with lower and upper bounds by size. These bounds are necessary to meet one of Japanese local forestry practices for forming “Danchi”, as a size specific cluster. This paper develops a new model to frame aggregation of forest units bounded by size of clusters for “Danchi” over a forest landscape. The proposed model interprets a forest map as a flow channel or network, then utilizes the concept of maximum flow problem to seek an optimal set of size-bounded clusters over a forest landscape. Computational experiments were conducted to demonstrate how size-bounded clusters were formed and allocated using one hypothetical forest map with 200 forest units as well as a real forest map with 462 units from Kochi prefecture in Japan. The results of the experiments showed that the proposed model is efficient to resolve spatial aggregation issues to form “Danchi” with different sets of bounds by size for Japanese local forestry practices.
