Forests In Landscapes

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.

Designing Sustainable Forest Landscapes is a definitive guide to the design and management of forest landscapes, covering the theory and principles of forest design as well as providing practical guidance on methods and tools. Including a variety of international case studies the book focuses on ecosystem regeneration, the management of natural forests and the management of plantation forests. Using visualisation techniques, design processes and evaluation techniques it looks at promoting landscapes which are designed to optimise the balance between human intervention and natural evolution. A comprehensive, practical and accessible book, Designing Sustainable Forest Landscapes is essential reading for all those involved in forestry and landscape professions.

This book, published in cooperation with WWF International, integrates the restoration of forest functions into landscape conservation plans. The contents represent the collective body of knowledge and experience of WWF and its many partners - collected here for the first time. This guide will serve as a first stop for practitioners and researchers in many organizations and regions, and as a key reference on the subject.

This volume combines sound landscape principles with detailed examples and practical advice for the conservation and enhancement of landscape in and around managed forests. The author describes the key aesthetic principles and discusses the broader implications of forestry in the landscape. Numerous examples show how forests can be planned to reflect their surroundings, especially in the planting and felling stages. The need to combine forestry practice with a wider understanding is stressed. The choice of species is discussed, as are the design of small woods, shelterbelts, andforest roadsides.

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

Climate change, urban sprawl, abandonment of agriculture, intensification of forestry and agriculture, changes in energy generation and use, expansion of infrastructure networks, habitat destruction and degradation, and other drivers of change occur at increasing rates. They affect patterns and processes in forest landscapes, and modify ecosystem services derived from those ecosystems. Consequently, rapidly changing landscapes present many new challenges to scientists and managers. While it is not uncommon to encounter the terms “global change” and “landscape” together in the ecological literature, a global analyses of drivers of change in forest landscapes, and their ecological consequences have not been addressed adequately. That is the goal of this volume: an exploration of the state of knowledge of global changes in forested landscapes with emphasis on causes and effects, and challenges faced by researchers and land managers. Initial chapters identify and describe major agents of landscape change: climate, fire, and human activities. The next series of chapters address implications of changes on ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and carbon flux. A chapter that describes methodologies of detecting and monitoring landscape changes is presented followed by chapter that highlights the many challenges forest landscape managers face amidst of global change. Finally, we present a summary and a synthesis of the main points presented in the book. Each chapter will contain the individual research experiences of chapter authors, augmented by review and synthesis of global scientific literature on relevant topics, as well as critical input from multiple peer reviewers.

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.

This book, which contains 8 chapters, provides a framework for the general public, forest managers and policy makers to understand what factors need to be included when working towards using and protecting the world's forests so that they can be sustained. Topics covered include: historical perceptions and use of forests; the creation of today's forest landscapes by global societies; decision making related to forests becoming democratic and globalized; changing views about the ecology and conservation of forests; the historical and continuing impacts of human disturbances (i.e., air pollution, climatic change, salt injury, introduced plants, introduced insects, introduced pathogens, forest management activities and wars) on forests; the relevance of natural disturbances (i.e., wildfires, wind, extreme temperature and moisture, volcanic eruptions, pathogens, and insect and vertebrate pests) in maintaining sustainable forests; the relationship of human health to forest management; and the relationship among forests, humans and the carbon cycle. Case studies from Australia, Bolivia, Botswana, China, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and the USA, are also included.