Management Alternatives

Toggled Alternatives

Pack Forest managers developed eight alternatives using Toggle, an interactive spreadsheet that provides instantaneous displays of landscape changes made by altering group pathway allocations. It is planning based on the average stand from each of the groups, and is intended only to provide a rough overview of effects. The greater the variability within the groups, the more room for discrepancy in the toggled predictions. The toggle approach provides great freedom to quickly test the realms of possibility and to glimpse the benefits and costs of a given landscape strategy.

The eight alternatives ranged in strategy from unrealistic displays of extremes (alternatives 1, 2 and 8) to several realistic possibilities that explored different emphasis. Pack Forest presented these to the College Lands Planning Committee on December 17, 2001. The linked PowerPoint presentation provides an overview of the development and planning stages and greater analyses of the nine alternatives. At the planning meeting, Pack Forest supported the adoption of Alternative 7, which provides a slightly stepped-up rate of harvest on the currently non-mature stands, but puts a greater number of acres in non-production reserves compared with the other "realistic" alternatives.

The Committee agreed to support Alternative 7, but recommended that Alternative 5 also be be developed to the next stage of complexity (the "final run" in LMS with all stands assigned to a pathway). It was further agreed that if the final run analysis of these alternatives compared well with the toggled versions, the alternatives could be passed on to Dean Bruce Bare to select one for approval. The Committee preferred to have two alternatives sent to the Dean to provide a basis of comparison.

Below are the relative ranking summaries of the eight alternatives. Refer to the objectives page and measurable criteria for definitions and explanations of the evaluation categories. Pathway allocations tables provide the percent area distributions of the pathways for all alternatives.

 

Mason McKinley, Pack Forest