Operational Research (OR) has proven to be a powerful tool for modeling and solving forest management problems. The earliest applications in this field, using Linear Programming, emerged in the 1950s. With the widespread availability of Geographic Information Systems and the advent of increasingly powerful computers, the 1990s marked the beginning of extensive developments in forest management applications supported by geographic information. Many of these applications also employ other OR techniques, such as Multi-Objective Linear Programming and Integer Programming.
To see a short introduction to OR click here.