Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century

Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century
Author: Kathryn A. Kohm
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1997
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781610913928

Over the past decade, a sea change has occurred in the field of forestry. A vastly increased understanding of how ecological systems function has transformed the science from one focused on simplifying systems, producing wood, and managing at the stand-level to one concerned with understanding and managing complexity, providing a wide range of ecological goods and services, and managing across broad landscapes.Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is an authoritative and multidisciplinary examination of the current state of forestry and its relation to the emergent field of ecosystem management. Drawing upon the expertise of top professionals in the field, it provides an up-to-date synthesis of principles of ecosystem management and their implications for forest policy. Leading scientists, including Malcolm Hunter, Jr., Bruce G. Marcot, James K. Agee, Thomas R. Crow, Robert J. Naiman, John C. Gordon, R.W. Behan, Steven L. Yaffee, and many others examine topics that are central to the future of forestry: new understandings of ecological processes and principles, from stand structure and function to disturbance processes and the movement of organisms across landscapes challenges to long-held assumptions: the rationale for clearcutting, the wisdom of short rotations, the exclusion of fire traditional tools in light of expanded goals for forest landscapes managing at larger spatial scales, including practical information and ideas for managing large landscapes over long time periods the economic, organizational, and political issues that are critical to implementing successful ecosystem management and developing institutions to transform knowledge into action Featuring a 16-page center section with color photographs that illustrate some of the best on-the-ground examples of ecosystem management from around the world, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is the definitive text on managing ecosystems. It provides a compelling case for thinking creatively beyond the bounds of traditional forest resource management, and will be essential reading for students; scientists working in state, federal, and private research institutions; public and private forest managers; staff members of environmental/conservation organizations; and policymakers.

Regional Silviculture of the United States

Regional Silviculture of the United States
Author: John W. Barrett
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 662
Release: 1995-02-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780471598176

A valuable working resource for professionals. An excellent text for advanced forestry students . . . This unique book provides students and professionals with a broad-based knowledge of contemporary silviculture theory and practice.Throughout, the authors emphasize fundamental questions of edaphic,physiographic, and climatic site factors, as well as ecologicalrelationships and silvical characteristics of major tree species.Updated and expanded to reflect the many scientific, socioeconomic,and public policy trends that have had a profound impact onsilviculture over the past decade, this Third Edition of RegionalSilviculture of the United States: * Brings together the knowledge and expertise of fourteen leadingexperts from around the nation * Provides a rational framework with which to critically assessforest data and to develop innovative silvicultural solutions * Features region-by-region coverage of the eleven major foresttypes in the continental U.S. and Alaska * Offers a detailed look at practices that promote a wide range offorest resources--from wood production and outdoor recreation, towildlife habitat and range forage production * Now includes more in-depth coverage of such crucial themes asbiodiversity, endangered species, habitat fragmentation, foresthealth, landscape management, neotropical migrants, and more "...silviculture is not reducible to a series of rules; it must beflexible and adaptable to a variety of conditions. Much of it is anart as well as a synthesis of ecology and economics. There is nosingle best answer to how a stand should be managed. Andinstitutional and societal constraints must be considered." --fromthe Preface by John W. Barrett Regional Silviculture of the United States, Third Edition is not a"cookbook,"offering pat recipes for solving "typical" silviculturalproblems. Instead, it arms those responsible for the developmentand care of forests with something far more valuable--a rationalframework for the analysis of forest data and the development ofinnovative solutions tailored to specific forest types and theshifting politicoeconomic constraints under which silviculturalistsmust work. One way in which this book achieves that goal is by providingreaders with a broad-based knowledge of contemporary silviculturetheory and practice. In chapters organized according to the elevenmajor forest regions of the continental U.S., fourteen recognizedexperts from around the nation--each of them a specialist in aparticular region of operation--offer their valuable insights andobservations on silviculture in general and on varioussilvicultural practices with which they are familiar. Throughout,the authors are attentive to fundamental considerations of edaphic,physiographic, and climatic site factors, as well as ecologicalrelationships and silvical characteristics of major treespecies. This Third Edition of John W. Barrett's classic has been revisedand expanded to encompass a number of important themes which haverisen to prominence within silviculture over the past decade,including biodiversity, endangered species, habitat fragmentation,forest health, landscape management, and neotropicalmigrants. Timely, authoritative, and comprehensive in scope, RegionalSilviculture of the United States, Third Edition is a valuableresource for foresters, forestry students, ecologists,environmental scientists, and all those concerned with development,management, and preservation of our most valuable nationaltreasure.