Forest landscape planning and management: A state-of-the-art review

Abstract

Visual environmental aesthetics as a combinatorial output of a mathematical model can enhance public acceptance of forest activities and increase the perception of sustainability of forest enterprises. This article provides a comprehensive review of the state of the art in landscape management in forest areas worldwide. In forest planning, little research has examined how the visual impact management on wood production can be compatible with the economic viability of forest enterprises. With this review, we seek to contextualize the problem, listing the challenges, trends, and advances achieved recently. The first part of the review is devoted to considerations about the following: (i) landscape management in forested areas, with a history of the landscape planning in major global regions; and (ii) spatial forest planning, including operational research, forest optimization, and GIS to solve problems at the landscape scale. In the second part, we present a bibliometric survey to statistically examine the growth of the landscape planning between 1980 and 2021. The number of studies related to the topic has increased, especially in the last decade. North America and Europe are the regions with the highest scientific production in forest landscape planning and management. There is still little research dedicated to landscape management in commercially planted forests. The approach in the form of spatial structure, considering the inclusion of multi-objective restrictions and functions, is a desirable evolution in the planning and management of sustainable forest plantations.