Ecomosaic composition and expected utility indices

Abstract

Forest planning is a major issue for future development of regions, and landscape changes reflect to a large extent land-use/cover patterns related to economic and option's values as driving forces. Managing for reducing variability may have high costs of stability or resilience. Decision theory relies on maximizing an average or expected value of a preference pattern expressed by utility functions. In this paper I discuss quantitative indices bonded to expected utility concepts that may provide diagnosis tools and become generators of the relative extension of the different habitats that compose an ecomosaic. The indices combine characteristic values and context values in contributive values, defined in a normalized measure space. Scenarios of composition for forest planning in the region of Nisa, Portugal, are discussed and benchmarked with standard measures: mean economic value, related to recover costs of forest habitats, and landscape diversity. Situation theory and relevance theory are axiomatic baselines of the abductive process and heuristic procedures here developed.