Applicability of Adaptive Management Methods to Municipality Forest Planning in Japan

Abstract

Although a municipal governments started to have a greater role in local forest management, most municipalities are not equipped to serve in this function because of a shortage of manpower, diffculties in consensus building, and a lacks of evaluation systems. There is an the urgent need to develop processes for establishing a municipal forest plan as a master plan of local forest management. The adaptive management (AM) method can be considered as an effective solution. AM helps forest managers to improve sustainability by comprehensive natural resource management methods including planning, doing, checking, and acting. Some cases reported that applying AM is a possible and effective approach towards natural resource management with complexity and uncertainty. Applying AM process to municipal forest planning is supposed to be exceedingly practical for local forest management. It is expected to enhance the effectiveness of the because of its suitability to municipal forest plans and universal evaluation criteria and methods.