Towards sustainable timber harvesting of homogeneous stands: dynamic programming in synergy with forest growth simulation

In this work, the problem of maximizing the volume of wood harvested in a single-species stand over a period of time is addressed. To this end, a solution that combines dynamic programming and a single-tree forest growth simulator is developed. In this method, the decision variable of the amount of wood to be harvested at each period is discretized. This ensures that the method finds a global optimal solution within the given discretization. In the past, there have been approaches that use exact methods which solve this problem, but these approaches consider the stand growth as a whole and require the simulator to meet certain conditions. In our work, a single-tree growth simulator is used. With these tools, different alternatives for the parameters of thinning percentage in each period, duration of the planning horizon, and the selection of the trees to be harvested, among others, are explored and assessed. The results showed that the proposed method is useful not only as a tool to optimize the harvesting of the timber of a single-species stand, but also to explore different alternatives to the usual practices, that continue to change constantly.