Measuring The Sustainability Of Forest Management Using Criteria And Indicators

Pressure on forest resources is increasing and multiple forest values still conflicting.This has led to the need of tools to better define and measure progress headed for sustainable forest management.Criteria and indicators(C&I)provide such a science-based tool.Sustainable forest management(SFM)means the environmentally appropriate,socially beneficial,and economically viable management of forests for present and future generations.The aim of this research is to measure the progress made towards achieving sustainable forest management in Fujian Province P.R of China.Criteria and indicators were identified.MCA methods(ranking,pair-wise comparison,and scoring)were used by experts in evaluating the sets of criteria and indicators.Data was analyzed using Subordinate function method and Efficiency coefficient method.Thirty eight indicators under nine criteria and three principals were used.The results show that indicator 32 and 33 are highly scored where indicator 27 and 37 have a low score.Criterion 5 has a lowest score where Criterion 7 has a highest score.Principle two(P.2)has a lowest score where Principle three(P.3)has a highest score.The overall score for sustainable forest management is 0.8056.According to the theory of appraising index of sustainable forest management assessment where if K?0.3:Totally not sustainable;0.3<K?0.5:Basically not sustainable;0.5<K?0.7:Weakly sustainable;0.7<K?0.8:Basically sustainable;0.8<K?0.9:Sustainable;0.9<K?1:Totally sustainable.Based on score obtained 0.8<0.8056?0.9;Forest in Fujian province are sustainable managed but some indicators show a gap in forest productivity and increase of commercial forest area,the reason behind is that The indicators under C5 like site quality is one of major problem and has a low score this may have a relationship with geographic characteristics of Fujian where some part are dominated by rocks so soil structure and texture matters in Forests productivity.The study recommends furthermore researches on SFM at the low level and the household woodlots level in order to achieve the better planning,promotion and policy implementation of SFM.China could develop its appropriate indicators because using Montreal process may not be suitable at some levels.