Download or read book Forests as Complex Social and Ecological Systems written by Patrick J. Baker and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Chadwick Dearing Oliver has made major intellectual contributions to forest science and natural resources management. Over the course of his career he has actively sought to bring research and practice together through synthesis, outreach, and capacity-building. A common thread throughout his career has been complexity and how we as a society understand and manage complex systems. His work on forest stand dynamics, landscape management, and sustainability have all focused on the emergent properties of complex ecological and/or social systems. This volume celebrates a remarkable career through a diverse group of former students and colleagues who work on a wide range of subject areas related to the management of complex natural resource systems. Over the past decade there has been considerable discussion about forests as complex adaptive systems. Advances in remote sensing, social methods, and data collection and processing have enabled more detailed characterisations of complex natural systems across spatial and temporal scales than ever before. Making sense of these data, however, requires conceptual frameworks that are robust to the complexity of the systems and their inherent dynamics, particularly in the context of global change. This volume presents a collection of cutting-edge research on natural ecosystems and their dynamics through the lens of complex adaptive systems. ​It includes contributions by a wide range of authors from academia, NGOs, forest industry, and governmental organisations with diverse perspectives on forests and natural resources management. Each chapter offers new insights into how these systems can be made more resilient to ensure that they provide a diversity of ecological and social values well into the future. Together they provide a robust way of thinking about the many challenges that natural ecosystems face and how we as society may best address them.

Download or read book Managing Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems written by Christian Messier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book links the emerging concepts of complexity, complex adaptive system (CAS) and resilience to forest ecology and management. It explores how these concepts can be applied in various forest biomes of the world with their different ecological, economic and social settings, and history. Individual chapters stress different elements of these concepts based on the specific setting and expertise of the authors. Regions and authors have been selected to cover a diversity of viewpoints and emphases, from silviculture and natural forests to forest restoration, and from boreal to tropical forests. The chapters show that there is no single generally applicable approach to forest management that applies to all settings. The first set of chapters provides a global overview of how complexity, CAS and resilience theory can benefit researchers who study forest ecosystems. A second set of chapters provides guidance for managers in understanding how these concepts can help them to facilitate forest ecosystem change and renewal (adapt or self-organize) in the face of global change while still delivering the goods and services desired by humans. The book takes a broad approach by covering a variety of forest biomes and the full range of management goals from timber production to forest restoration to promote the maintenance of biodiversity, quality of water, or carbon storage.

Download or read book Managing Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems written by Christian C. Messier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emerging concepts of complexity, complex adaptive system (CAS) and resilience to forest ecology and management are linked in this new book. It explores how these concepts can be applied in various forest biomes of the world with their different ecological, economic and social settings, and history.

Download or read book Managing Forest Ecosystems The Challenge of Climate Change written by Felipe Bravo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-05-20 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate changes, particularly warming trends, have been recorded around the globe. For many countries, these changes in climate have become evident through insect epidemics (e.g., Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic in Western Canada, bark beetle in secondary spruce forests in Central Europe), water shortages and intense forest fires in the Mediterranean countries (e.g., 2005 droughts in Spain), and unusual storm activities (e.g., the 2004 South-East Asia Tsunami). Climate changes are expected to impact vegetation as manifested by changes in vegetation extent, migration of species, tree species composition, growth rates, and mortality. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has included discussions on how forests may be impacted, and how they may be used to mitigate the impacts of changes in climate, to possibly slow the rate of change. This book provides current scientific information on the biological and economical impacts of climate changes in forest environments, as well as information on how forest management activities might mitigate these impacts, particularly through carbon sequestration. Case studies from a wide geographic range are presented. This information is beneficial to managers and researchers interested in climate change and impacts upon forest environments and economic activities. This volume, which forms part of Springer’s book series Managing Forest Ecosystems, presents state-of-the-art research results, visions and theories, as well as specific methods for sustainable forest management in changing climatic conditions.

Download or read book Dynamics Silviculture and Management of Mixed Forests written by Andrés Bravo-Oviedo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The capacity of mixed forests to mitigate climate change effects by increasing resilience and lowering risks is pinpointed as an opportunity to highlight the role of tree species rich forests as part of complex socio-ecological systems. This book updates and presents the state-of-the-art of mixed forest performance in terms of regeneration, growth, yield and delivery of ecosystem services. Examples from more than 20 countries in Europe, North Africa and South America provide insights on the interplay between structure and functionining, stability, silviculture and optimization of management of this type of forests. The book also analyses the role of natural mixed forests and mixed plantations in the delivery of ecosystem services and the best modelling strategy to study mixed forest dynamics. The book is intended to serve as a reference tool for students, researchers and professionals concerned about the management of mixed forests in a context of social and environmental change.

Download or read book Forests in Landscapes written by Stewart Maginnis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At last a really useful book telling us how all the rhetoric about ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management is being translated into practical solutions on the ground CLAUDE MARTIN, WWF INTERNATIONAL For too long, foresters have seen forests as logs waiting to be turned into something useful. This book demonstrates that forests in fact have multiple values, and managing them as ecosystems will bring more benefits to a greater cross-section of the public JEFFREY A. MCNEELY, CHIEF SCIENTIST, IUCN This book demonstrates that [ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management] are neither alternative methods of forest management nor are they simply complicated ways of saying the same thing. They are both emerging concepts for more integrated and holistic ways of managing forests within larger landscapes in ways that optimize benefits to all stakeholders ACHIM STEINER AND IAN JOHNSON, FROM THE FOREWORD Recent innovations in Sustainable Forest Management and Ecosystem Approaches are resulting in forests increasingly being managed as part of the broader social-ecological systems in which they exist. Forests in Landscapes reviews changes that have occurred in forest management in recent decades. Case studies from Europe, Canada, the United States, Russia, Australia, the Congo and Central America provide a wealth of international examples of innovative practices. Cross-cutting chapters examine the political ecology and economics of forest management, and review the information needs and the use and misuse of criteria and indicators to achieve broad societal goals for forests. A concluding chapter draws out the key lessons of changes in forest management in recent decades and sets out some thoughts for the future. This book is a must-read for practitioners, researchers and policy makers concerned with forests and land use. It contains lessons for all those concerned with forests as sources of people's livelihoods and as part of rural landscapes. Published with IUCN and PROFOR

Download or read book Forest Ecosystems written by David A. Perry and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-07-24 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice This acclaimed textbook is the most comprehensive available in the field of forest ecology. Designed for advanced students of forest science, ecology, and environmental studies, it is also an essential reference for forest ecologists, foresters, and land managers. The authors provide an inclusive survey of boreal, temperate, and tropical forests with an emphasis on ecological concepts across scales that range from global to landscape to microscopic. Situating forests in the context of larger landscapes, they reveal the complex patterns and processes observed in tree-dominated habitats. The updated and expanded second edition covers • Conservation • Ecosystem services • Climate change • Vegetation classification • Disturbance • Species interactions • Self-thinning • Genetics • Soil influences • Productivity • Biogeochemical cycling • Mineralization • Effects of herbivory • Ecosystem stability

Download or read book Forests Forever written by John J. Berger and published by Center for American Places. This book was released on 2008 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A greatly revised and expanded version of the author's acclaimed Understanding Forests, this book offers a clear and comprehensive survey of forest history and management practices in North America and the world. Berger draws upon diverse sources in science, politics, economics, law, and anthropology to argue that ecology should be the driving force behind domestic and international forest management." "An in-depth and wholly readable account, Forests Forever issues a call to arms for all those concerned with saving, restoring, preserving, and better managing the world's forests today in an expanding "green" marketplace."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Forest Ecosystems written by David A. Perry and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-07-24 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice This acclaimed textbook is the most comprehensive available in the field of forest ecology. Designed for advanced students of forest science, ecology, and environmental studies, it is also an essential reference for forest ecologists, foresters, and land managers. The authors provide an inclusive survey of boreal, temperate, and tropical forests with an emphasis on ecological concepts across scales that range from global to landscape to microscopic. Situating forests in the context of larger landscapes, they reveal the complex patterns and processes observed in tree-dominated habitats. The updated and expanded second edition covers • Conservation • Ecosystem services • Climate change • Vegetation classification • Disturbance • Species interactions • Self-thinning • Genetics • Soil influences • Productivity • Biogeochemical cycling • Mineralization • Effects of herbivory • Ecosystem stability

Download or read book Responses of Northern U S Forests to Environmental Change written by Robert A. Mickler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years of research carried out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Services' Northern Global Change Program, contributing to our understanding of the effects of multiples stresses on forest ecosystems over multiple spatial and temporal scales. At the physiological level, reports explore changes in growth and biomass, species composition, and wildlife habitat; at the landscape scale, the abundance distribution, and dynamics of species, populations, and communities are addressed. Chapters include studies of nutrient depletion, climate and atmospheric deposition, carbon and nitrogen cycling, insect and disease outbreaks, biotic feedbacks with the atmosphere, interacting effects of multiple stresses, and modeling the regional effects of global change. The book provides sound ecological information for policymakers and land-use planners as well as for researchers in ecology, forestry, atmospheric science, soil science and biogeochemistry.

Download or read book A Critique of Silviculture written by Klaus J. Puettmann and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discipline of silviculture is at a crossroads. Silviculturists are under increasing pressure to develop practices that sustain the full function and dynamics of forested ecosystems and maintain ecosystem diversity and resilience while still providing needed wood products. A Critique of Silviculture offers a penetrating look at the current state of the field and provides suggestions for its future development. The book includes an overview of the historical developments of silvicultural techniques and describes how these developments are best understood in their contemporary philosophical, social, and ecological contexts. It also explains how the traditional strengths of silviculture are becoming limitations as society demands a varied set of benefits from forests and as we learn more about the importance of diversity on ecosystem functions and processes. The authors go on to explain how other fields, specifically ecology and complexity science, have developed in attempts to understand the diversity of nature and the variability and heterogeneity of ecosystems. The authors suggest that ideas and approaches from these fields could offer a road map to a new philosophical and practical approach that endorses managing forests as complex adaptive systems. A Critique of Silviculture bridges a gap between silviculture and ecology that has long hindered the adoption of new ideas. It breaks the mold of disciplinary thinking by directly linking new ideas and findings in ecology and complexity science to the field of silviculture. This is a critically important book that is essential reading for anyone involved with forest ecology, forestry, silviculture, or the management of forested ecosystems.

Download or read book Ecological Forest Management written by Jerry F. Franklin and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fundamental changes have occurred in all aspects of forestry over the last 50 years, including the underlying science, societal expectations of forests and their management, and the evolution of a globalized economy. This textbook is an effort to comprehensively integrate this new knowledge of forest ecosystems and human concerns and needs into a management philosophy that is applicable to the vast majority of global forest lands. Ecological forest management (EFM) is focused on policies and practices that maintain the integrity of forest ecosystems while achieving environmental, economic, and cultural goals of human societies. EFM uses natural ecological models as its basis contrasting it with modern production forestry, which is based on agronomic models and constrained by required return-on-investment. Sections of the book consider: 1) Basic concepts related to forest ecosystems and silviculture based on natural models; 2) Social and political foundations of forestry, including law, economics, and social acceptability; 3) Important current topics including wildfire, biological diversity, and climate change; and 4) Forest planning in an uncertain world from small privately-owned lands to large public ownerships. The book concludes with an overview of how EFM can contribute to resolving major 21st century issues in forestry, including sustaining forest dependent societies.

Download or read book Ecosystem Services from Forest Landscapes written by Ajith H. Perera and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades, the topic of forest ecosystem services has attracted the attention of researchers, land managers, and policy makers around the globe. The services rendered by forest ecosystems range from intrinsic to anthropocentric benefits that are typically grouped as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. The research efforts, assessments, and attempts to manage forest ecosystems for their sustained services are now widely published in scientific literature. This volume focuses on broad-scale aspects of forest ecosystem services, beyond individual stands to large landscapes. In doing so, it illustrates the conceptual and practical opportunities as well as challenges involved with planning for forest ecosystem services across landscapes, regions, and nations. The goal here is to broaden the scope of land use planning through the adoption of a landscape-scale approach. Even though this approach is complex and involves multiple ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions, the landscape perspective appears to offer the best opportunity for a sustained provision of forest ecosystem services.

Download or read book People Forests and Change written by Deanna H. Olson and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forests throughout the world are undergoing rapid, far-reaching change as a result of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. The challenge is to manage these forests in ways that avoid formulaic approaches to complex issues. This book takes on the challenge of balancing local economies, wood products, and biodiversity by proposing diverse new approaches to forest management using new research from the moist coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. --

Download or read book Forests and Food written by Bhaskar Vira and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As population estimates for 2050 reach over 9 billion, issues of food security and nutrition have been dominating academic and policy debates. A total of 805 million people are undernourished worldwide and malnutrition affects nearly every country on the planet. Despite impressive productivity increases, there is growing evidence that conventional agricultural strategies fall short of eliminating global hunger, as well as having long-term ecological consequences. Forests can play an important role in complementing agricultural production to address the Sustainable Development Goals on zero hunger. Forests and trees can be managed to provide better and more nutritionally-balanced diets, greater control over food inputs—particularly during lean seasons and periods of vulnerability (especially for marginalised groups)—and deliver ecosystem services for crop production. However forests are undergoing a rapid process of degradation, a complex process that governments are struggling to reverse. This volume provides important evidence and insights about the potential of forests to reducing global hunger and malnutrition, exploring the different roles of landscapes, and the governance approaches that are required for the equitable delivery of these benefits. Forests and Food is essential reading for researchers, students, NGOs and government departments responsible for agriculture, forestry, food security and poverty alleviation around the globe.

Download or read book The Social Lives of Forests written by Susanna B. Hecht and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face—including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation—are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests’ past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces—from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems—has masked a significant contemporary trend of woodland resurgence, even in the forests of the tropics. Focusing on the history and current use of woodlands from India to the Amazon, The Social Lives of Forests attempts to build a coherent view of forests sited at the nexus of nature, culture, and development. With chapters covering the effects of human activities on succession patterns in now-protected Costa Rican forests; the intersection of gender and knowledge in African shea nut tree markets; and even the unexpectedly rich urban woodlands of Chicago, this book explores forests as places of significant human action, with complex institutions, ecologies, and economies that have transformed these landscapes in the past and continue to shape them today. From rain forests to timber farms, the face of forests—how we define, understand, and maintain them—is changing.

Download or read book Responses of Northern U S Forests to Environmental Change written by Robert A. Mickler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2000-05-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Global Change Research Act of 1990, "global change" is defined as "changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life. " For the purposes of this book, we interpret the definition of global change broadly to include physical and chemical environmental changes that are likely to affect the productivity and health of forest ecosystems over the long term. Important environmental changes in the Northern United States include steadily increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, tropospheric ozone, wet and dry deposition of nitrogen and sulfur compounds, acidic precipitation and clouds, and climate variability. These environmental factors interact in complex ways to affect plant physiological functions and soil processes in the context of forest landscapes derived from centuries of intensive land use and natural disturbances. Research in the North has begun to unravel some key questions about how environmental changes will impact the productivity and health of forest ecosystems, species distributions and abundance, and associations of people and forests. Initial research sponsored by the USDA Forest Service under the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was focused on basic process-level understanding of tree species and forest v VI Preface ecosystem responses to environmental stress. Chemical pollution stresses received equal emphasis with climate change concerns.