Developing a prototype decision support framework to assess forest management scenarios as a nature-based decarbonization solution for the mining sector: A case study in British Columbia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study, realized in partnership with a leading global gold producer, explores how forest management nature-based solutions (NbS) can be integrated into decarbonization strategies to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. NbS, including carbon sequestration in forests, are expected to play an important role in meeting decarbonization commitments in the mining sector. Our primary contribution is a prototype open-source decision support system (DSS) framework for modeling forest management scenarios using publicly available data and reproducible workflows. We demonstrate the framework on three distinct mining sites in British Columbia (BC), Canada, using geospatial data, forest inventory, and landscape-level models. The prototype compares a business-as-usual scenario with alternative harvesting scenarios to examine objectives such as maximizing harvest volume, minimizing harvested area, maximizing ecosystem carbon stocks, and minimizing net emissions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are tracked to evaluate environmental, economic, and social aspects. The case study serves to illustrate that both the method and code implementation adapt readily to sites with different forest dynamics. While the current notebook-based interface is limited in usability, it supports a fully open, transparent, and reproducible analysis pipeline. We argue that further development of this approach is warranted to improve usability while retaining transparency and auditability. The study does not prescribe specific harvesting strategies; rather, the findings illustrate how forest management objectives influence outcomes across KPIs. Scenarios prioritizing higher harvest volumes yield greater economic and social benefits but often coincide with trade-offs in environmental indicators. Conversely, restricting harvesting can improve environmental indicators. While not production-ready, the prototype demonstrates promising attributes for nature-based decarbonization analyses and suggests a direction for further development and evaluation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".