چكيده لاتين :
In this study, three heuristics were developed to assess the quality of forest plans that can be developed and the time required to develop them. The three heuristics include threshold accepting, I-opt tabu
search and a combined heuristic which consisted of threshold accepting, I-opt tabu search and 2-opt tabu search. The combined heuristic was developed to capitalize on the unique search properties of both threshold
accepting and tabu search. Present hypothesis was that each of the three heuristics would produce forest plans of approximately equal solution quality. The three heuristics are assessed using forest plans developed from nine hypothetical landownerships containing various ownership patterns and age class distributions. The combined heuristic found the highest quality forest plans for most problems with older and normal age class distributions. In problems with younger age class distributions, the combined heuristic produced slightly inferior solutions as compared to threshold accepting. The variation in forest plan quality was lowest when using the combined heuristic or threshold accepting, thus these two processes are of value for large-scale forest plan development efforts.
