Decision making in forest management with consideration of stochastic prices

The optimal harvesting policy is calculated as a function of the entering stock, the price state, the harvesting cost, and the rate of interest in the capital market. In order to determine the optimal harvest schedule, the growth function and stumpage price process are estimated for the Swedish mixed species forests. The stumpage price is assumed to follow a stochastic Markov process. A stochastic dynamic programming technique and traditional deterministic methods are used to obtain the optimal decisions. The expected present value of all future profits is maximized. The results of adaptive optimization are compared with results obtained by the traditional deterministic approach. The results show a significant increase in the expected economic values via optimal adaptive decisions.
KEYWORDS: Optimal harvesting; Stochastic dynamic programming; Forest growth; Stumpage prices; Swedish forests

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