SYMFOR. Forest Management

SYMFOR is a framework of simulation models that was developed with support from DFID and the European Commission with the aim of providing policy- relevant information for the management of tropical forests.  SYMFOR was originally developed for use in Indonesia to enhance the impact of the vast amount of previous research on forests in SE Asia.  The framework was designed to integrate the results from previous research and then present it in a way that could readily be used by both policy-makers and forest managers to inform their decisions.  SYMFOR was designed to make research both accessible and relevant to the people who needed it.

The approach used to develop the SYMFOR framework differed from most other projects.  For a start, the intended users of the system were involved in all stages of the project, they helped to design the outcomes before the research commenced and hence the work was more likely to meet there needs.  We also realised that whilst most previous work had concentrated on describing the ecology of forests, the critical issue was to have a better understanding of the way that people interacted with their forests.  Representing real-life forest management was the main challenge for the project, one that illustrated how difficult and important it is to understand the human dimension of interactions with ecosystems.  The representation of the human dimension of the management of forest ecosystems is the thing that makes SYMFOR different.  For this reason there was interest in applying the SYMFOR framework at other locations, including Guyana and Brazil, where SYMFOR became SIMFLORA.

We also realised that different users would need to interact with the system in different ways.  For this reason SYMFOR has several different operating modes and user interfaces.  Policy makers and managers can interact with SYMFOR selecting different policy options and watching the likely impact on the forest and its productivity in real time.  Students can use the system for role playing, creating and testing hypotheses that extend their understanding of the ways that people interact with tropical forests.  Finally researchers can interact with the model to explore new ways of representing forests and human interactions with forests to generate new knowledge before running the system to generate sufficient data to perform robust statistical analysis of different scenarios of forest management for publication in peer reviewed journals.

The different ways that SYMFOR can represent knowledge to stakeholders means that the impact of this knowledge can be significantly enhanced.  The experience from Indonesia was that combining several approaches was more effective.  For example, a presentation to a senior policy-maker was very much more effective, if they could see the results of policy decisions on a screen (effectively playing games), whilst at the same time being presented with a short policy brief summarising key issues, which in turn referred back to evidence that had been presented a peer-reviewed publication in a major international journal.

Additional information about SYMFOR is available on www.symfor.org.

Selected publications

Phillips, P.D., de Azevedo, C.P., Degen, B., Thompson, I.S., Silva, J.N.M. and van Gardingen, P.R. (2004). An individual-based spatially explicit simulation model for strategic forest management planning in the eastern Amazon. Ecological Modelling, 173: 335-354.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/paulvg/publications/symfor_brazil.pdf

Phillips, P.D., Brash, T.E., Yasman, I., Subagyo, P. and van Gardingen, P.R. (2003). An individual-based spatially explicit tree growth model for forests in East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Ecological Modelling, 159: 1-26.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/paulvg/publications/symfor_indonesia.pdf

Valle, D., Phillips, P., Vidal, E., Schulze, M., Grogan, J., Sales, M. and van Gardingen, P.R. (2007). Adaptation of a spatially explicit individual tree-based growth and yield model and long-term comparison between reduced-impact and conventional logging in eastern Amazonia, Brazil. Forest Ecology and Management, 243: 187-198.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/paulvg/publications/simflora.pdf