Estimating the effects of adjacency and green-up constraints on landowners of different sizes and spatial arrangements located in the southeastern U.S

The maximum clearcut size and green-up period is important for land managers adhering to voluntary and regulatory guidelines. Therefore the impact of actual and hypothetical clearcut size restrictions is a concern for forest landowners who manage land and intend to practice forestry for profit. In this research, the effect of a 97.1 ha (240 ac) clearcut size constraint with a green-up period of 2-yrs is assessed for forest landowners with different forest land sizes, ownership patterns, and age class distributions. A meta heuristic which consists of threshold accepting, 1-opt tabu search, and 2-opt tabu search is used to develop spatially-constrained forest plans for 27 hypothetical forest landowners. These results are compared to a relaxed solution produced with linear programming, and statistical analyses are used to determine significant differences. The analysis provided enough evidence to suggest that two factors (size of ownership pattern and initial age class distribution), and one interaction factor (ownership size × initial age class distribution) are significant in explaining the differences in the percent reduction in forest plan value among the forests managed by the hypothetical forest landowners. From an absolute value reduction perspective, small-sized older forests were most affected. From a percent value point of view, one can conclude from this analysis that landowners with small-sized forests and young initial age class distributions will be significantly more affected by potential adjacency and green-up restrictions in the southeastern U.S. than other types of landowners.