Natural Disturbance-Based Forest Management: Moving Beyond Retention and Continuous-Cover Forestry

Frontiers in Forests and Global Change

Lee Frelich¹  Timo Kuuluvainen²  Ellen Macdonald³  Per Angelstam⁴  Yasuhiro Kubota⁵  Kalev Jõgiste⁶  Benoit Lafleur⁷  Matti Koivula⁸ 

[1] Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, United States;Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland;Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada;Faculty of Forest Sciences, School for Forest Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Skinnskatteberg, Sweden;Faculty of Science, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Japan;Institute of Forestry and Rural Engineering, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia;National Sciences and Engineering Research Council-Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue-Université du Québec à Montréal (NSERC-UQAT-UQAM) Industrial Chair in Sustainable Forest Management and Institut de recherche sur les forêts, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Rouyn-Noranda, QC, Canada;Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Helsinki, Finland;

关键词: biodiversity conservation;    forest dynamics;    forest ecosystem;    landscape management;    restoration;    sustainable forestry;   

DOI  :  10.3389/ffgc.2021.629020

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Global forest area is declining rapidly, along with degradation of the ecological condition of remaining forests. Hence it is necessary to adopt forest management approaches that can achieve a balance between (1) human management designs based on homogenization of forest structure to efficiently deliver economic values and (2) naturally emerging self-organized ecosystem dynamics that foster heterogeneity, biodiversity, resilience and adaptive capacity. Natural disturbance-based management is suggested to provide such an approach. It is grounded on the premise that disturbance is a key process maintaining diversity of ecosystem structures, species and functions, and adaptive and evolutionary potential, which functionally link to sustainability of ecosystem services supporting human well-being. We review the development, ecological and evolutionary foundations and applications of natural disturbance-based forest management. With emphasis on boreal forests, we compare this approach with two mainstream approaches to sustainable forest management, retention and continuous-cover forestry. Compared with these approaches, natural disturbance-based management provides a more comprehensive framework, which is compatible with current understanding of multiple-scale ecological processes and structures, which underlie biodiversity, resilience and adaptive potential of forest ecosystems. We conclude that natural disturbance-based management provides a comprehensive ecosystem-based framework for managing forests for human needs of commodity production and immaterial values, while maintaining forest health in the rapidly changing global environment.

【 授权许可】

Unknown