Integrating the comercial haversts of mushrooms in forest management. An application in «Urcico» forest (Zamora)

Abstract

Although the non-timber forest products show a scarce importance at macroeconomic level, it is obvious they reach a great importance at local markets. Nevertheless, their incorporation within the methodologies usually employed in forest management are generally very weak in Spain. In this work we try to deep in the inclusion of these products inside the forest management, particularly in the case of mushrooms. The theoretical aspects of the paper are applied to a regular afforestation of Pinus sylvestris L., that it is representative of some common management problems in many Spanish forests. To perform this work a linear programming model has been built. Several objectives have been defined, associated with timber and mushroom production, and measured in physical and monetary units. The constraints habitually considered in forest management are included in the model. The solutions obtained are generally feasible, showing the degree of conflict between the objectives considered. Besides, another constraints that reflect recreation-protection criteria are successfully introduced.