Applying Resilience Concepts in Forest Management: A Retrospective Simulation Approach

Forests

Caren C. Dymond¹  David L. Spittlehouse²  Sinclair Tedder²  Katherine Hopkins²  Katharine McCallion²  James Sandland²  Francis E. "Jack" Putz² 

[1]Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, Government of British Columbia, PO Box 9515 Stn, Provincial Government, Victoria, BC V8W 9C2, Canada

关键词: biodiversity;    adaptation;    climate change;    forestry;    timber supply;    temperate forests;    landscape ecology;    economic analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/f6124377

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Increasing the resilience of ecological and sociological systems has been proposed as an option to adapt to changing future climatic conditions. However, few studies test the applicability of those strategies to forest management. This paper uses a real forest health incident to assess the ability of forest management strategies to affect ecological and economic resilience of the forest. Two landscape scale strategies are compared to business as usual management for their ability to increase resilience to a climate-change induced mountain pine beetle outbreak in the Kamloops Timber Supply Area, British Columbia, Canada for the period 1980 to 2060. Proactive management to reduce high risk species while maintaining or increasing diversity through reforestation was found to be more resilient in terms of the metrics: post-disturbance growing stock, improved volume and stability of timber flow, and net revenue. However, landscape-scale indicators of diversity were little affected by management. Our results were robust to uncertainty in tree growth rates and timber value and show that adapting to climate change through improving the resilience of forested landscapes is an economically viable option.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.