Dynamics Silviculture And Management Of Mixed Forests

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.

Stand Structure and Dynamics: Overview of Principles; Stand Structure and Dynamics: Case Studies;Productivity of Mixed-Species Stands; Silviculture and Management of Mixed-Epecies Stands.

Much of the world's forested land is dominated by mixed-species stands. Understanding the complex structure and dynamics of these mixtures is a necessary step in the process of formulating appropriate silvicultural systems for their management. David M. Smith, Professor Emeritus of Silviculture at Yale University, has devoted much of his career to the study of the structure, development, and silvicultural treatment of these kinds of stands. This volume is presented by Professor Smith's collegues to honor the contributions he has made to the field. It contains both reviews of past work and results of current studies of mixed stands: topics range from analysis of forest dynamics in unmanaged stands to studies of silvicultural systems applied to mixtures, with examples drawn from boreal, temperate, and tropical regions. Much of the work stresses the importance of understanding the characteristic growth patterns of individual species within mixed stands, and how species interactions shape developmental patterns.

This textbook offers a detailed overview of the current state of knowledge concerning the ecology and management of compositionally and structurally diverse forests. It provides answers to central questions such as: What are the scientific concepts used to assess the growth, dynamics and functioning of mixed-species forests, how generalizable are they, and what kind of experiments are necessary to develop them further? How do mixed-species stands compare with monocultures in relation to productivity, wood quality, and ecological stability in the face of stress and disturbances? How are the effects of species mixtures on ecosystem functioning influenced by the particular species composition, site conditions, and stand structure? How does any over- or underyielding at the forest-stand level emerge from the tree and organ level, and what are the main mechanisms behind mixing effects? How can our current scientific understanding of mixed-species forests be integrated into silvicultural concepts as well as practical forest management and planning? Do the ecological characteristics of mixed-species stands also translate into economic differences between mixtures and monocultures? In addition, the book addresses experimental designs and analytical approaches to study mixed-species forests and provides extensive empirical information, general concepts, models, and management approaches for mixed-species forests. As such, it offers a valuable resource for students, scientists and educators, as well as professional forest planners, managers, and consultants.

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.

This book presents the latest scientific and management information on multiaged silviculture, an emerging strategy for managing forestry systems worldwide. Over recent decades, forest science and management have tended to emphasize plantation silviculture. Whilst this clearly meets our wood production needs, many of the world's forests need to be managed far less intensively and more flexibly in order to maintain their natural ecosystem functions together with the values inherent in those processes. Developing multiaged management strategies for these complex forest ecosystems represents a global challenge to successfully integrate available science with sustainable management practices. Multiaged Silviculture covers the ecology and dynamics of multiaged stands, the management operations associated with regeneration, tending, and stocking control, and the implications of this strategy on production, genetic diversity, and stand health. It is primarily aimed at graduate level students and researchers in the fields of forestry and silviculture, but will also be of relevance and use to all professional foresters and silviculturists.

Public debate has stimulated interest in finding greater compatibility among forest management regimes. The debate has often portrayed management choices as tradeoffs between biophysical and socioeconomic components of ecosystems. Here we focus on specific management strategies and emphasize broad goals such as biodiversity, wood production and habitat conservation while maintaining other values from forestlands desired by the public. We examine the following proposition: Commodity production (timber, nontimber forest products) and the other forest values (biodiversity, fish and wildlife habitat) can be simultaneously produced from the same area in a socially acceptable manner. Based on recent research in the Pacific Northwest, we show there are alternatives for managing forest ecosystems that avoid the divisive arena of 'either-or' choices. Much of the work discussed in this book addresses two aspects of the compatibility issue. First, how are various forest management practices related to an array of associated goods and services? Second, how do different approaches to forest management affect relatively large and complex ecosystems?

Classical silviculture has often emphasized timber models, fundamentally based in production agriculture. This books presents silvicultural methods based in natural forest models—models that emulate natural disturbances and development processes, sustain biological legacies, and allow time to take its course in shaping stands. These methods, dubbed “ecological forestry,” have been successfully implemented by foresters for decades managing a wide variety of forestlands. Ecological silvicultural strategies protect threatened and rare species, sustain biological diversity, and provide habitat for game and non-game species, all while providing timber in profitable ways.

The most up-to-date, comprehensive resource on silviculture that covers the range of topics and issues facing today’s foresters and resource professionals The tenth edition of the classic work, The Practice of Silviculture: Applied Forest Ecology, includes the most current information and the results of research on the many issues that are relevant to forests and forestry. The text covers such timely topics as biofuels and intensive timber production, ecosystem and landscape scale management of public lands, ecosystem services, surface drinking water supplies, urban and community greenspace, forest carbon, fire and climate, and much more. In recent years, silvicultural systems have become more sophisticated and complex in application, particularly with a focus on multi-aged silviculture. There have been paradigm shifts toward managing for more complex structures and age-classes for integrated and complementary values including wildlife, water and open space recreation. Extensively revised and updated, this new edition covers a wide range of topics and challenges relevant to the forester or resource professional today. This full-color text offers the most expansive book on silviculture and: Includes a revised and expanded text with clear language and explanations Covers the many cutting-edge resource issues that are relevant to forests and forestry Contains boxes within each chapter to provide greater detail on particular silvicultural treatments and examples of their use Features a completely updated bibliography plus new photographs, tables and figures The Practice of Silviculture: Applied Forest Ecology, Tenth Edition is an invaluable resource for students and professionals in forestry and natural resource management.

The aim of this book is to improve the understanding of forest dynamics and the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. How do tree crowns, trees or entire forest stands respond to thinning in the long term? What effect do tree species mixtures and multi-layering have on the productivity and stability of trees, stands or forest enterprises? How do tree and stand growth respond to stress factors such as climate change or air pollution? Furthermore, in the event that one has acquired knowledge about the effects of thinning, mixture and stress, how can one make that knowledge applicable to decision-making in forestry practice? The experimental designs, analytical methods, general relationships and models for answering questions of this kind are the focus of this book. Given the structures dealt with, which range from plant organs to the tree, stand and enterprise levels, and the processes analysed in a time frame of days or months to decades or even centuries, this book is directed at all readers interested in trees, forest stands and forest ecosystems. This work has been compiled for students, scientists, lecturers, forest planners, forest managers, and consultants.