Deforestation is frequently a topic of discussion in the environmental arena, but it is not just the number of trees that matters; the quality of the forest is also important. Even where the forest area is stable or increasing, there are often rapid changes in its character. Natural forests are being replaced by plantations or by intensively managed forests. Around the world, forests are becoming younger and less diverse, in both species and structure; this has important impacts for biodiversity and also affects many human values. In this groundbreaking text, forest quality is discussed as a useful new concept in forest conservation and management. Three main assessment criteria are used: authenticity; environmental benefits; and social and economic benefits. The book describes a methodology and protocol for collecting and analysing data, and outlines in detail the approach required with each indicator. The authors advocate a landscape approach to assessment and demonstrate how assessment works through a series of case studies that show how this approach can be used in many ways to help forest conservation management. This hands-on manual is for professionals involved in forestry, conservation and resource management worldwide, and contains case study material from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America that demonstrates practical uses of the new 'landscape' approach to forest conservation. Published with IUCN and WWF

This edited book is a collection of information on recent advancements in remote sensing for forestry application. The main focus of this book is to address the novel applications in remote sensing in terms of recent techniques, sensors, methods and data collection. Remote sensing has been used for many decades. Today, remote sensing is heavily utilized in forest management, which is acquired from airborne and space-borne platforms using satellite data. In recent years, there have been rapid advances in the new types of sensors. The new generations of satellite sensors are introduced not only to provide important information on forest ecosystems, but also to improve the techniques and accuracies obtained by the traditional approaches. Researchers have become increasingly aware of the potential of remote sensing to address important forestry issues and challenges. The number of forestry publications using remote sensing has grown very rapidly, and this is noticeable with many recent technologies and applications. This book provides valuable source of reference to foresters, researchers, ecologists, climate change scientists and scholars who use remote sensing in their work. Furthermore, it serves as an academic book for undergraduate and graduate students of forestry, agriculture, natural resources and environmental sciences. The book demonstrates and engages the students how the new advancements in remote sensing technology and theory relate to the many real-world forestry applications. It gives readers deeper understanding on how remote sensing has come a long way and evolved into a mature science in the past five decades.

The use and management of forests in the United States, especially the public owned ones, have been the focus of considerable controversy. First published in 1974, this volume, a collection of papers originally delivered at the RFF Forest Policy Forum, explores alternative forest management programmes to see what is biologically, economically, socially and politically possible. This title is a valuable resource for students interested in environmental studies, as well as for policy makers.

In Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape Dana Fritz traces the evolution of the Bessey Ranger District and Nursery of the Nebraska National Forest and Grasslands. Fritz’s contemporary photographs of this unique ecosystem, with provocative environmental essays, maps, and historical photographs from the U.S. Forest Service archives, illuminate the complex environmental and natural history of the site, especially as it relates to built environments, land use, and climate change. The Nebraska National Forest at Halsey, as it is known colloquially, is the largest hand-planted forest in the Western Hemisphere, and formerly in the world. This hybrid landscape of a conifer forest overlaid onto a semiarid grassland just west of the one-hundredth meridian was an ambitious late nineteenth-century idea to create a timber industry, to reclaim a landscape considered disordered and unproductive, and to change the local climate in northcentral Nebraska. While the planners seemed not to appreciate the native grasslands that form the ecosystem of the Nebraska Sandhills, they did recognize the reliable water from the Dismal and Middle Loup Rivers that border the site. In 1902 the first federal nursery was established as part of the Dismal River Forest Reserve to produce seedlings for plains homesteads and the adjacent treeless tract of land. At that time tree planting was not used for carbon sequestration but to mitigate the wind and evaporation of moisture. The Bessey Nursery now produces replacement seedlings for burned and beetle-damaged forests in the Rocky Mountains and for the Nebraska Conservation Trees Program. This constructed landscape of row-crop trees that were protected from fire for decades, yet never commercially harvested for timber, provides a rich metaphor for current environmental predicaments. The late nineteenth-century effort to reclaim with trees what was called the Great American Desert has evolved to a focus on twenty-first-century conservation, grassland restoration, and reforestation, all of which work to sequester carbon, maintain natural ecosystem balance, and mitigate large-scale climate change. Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape offers a visual and critical examination of this unique managed landscape, which has implications far beyond its borders.

'A few tools and a wide range of skills can achieve many things ...' If you've ever wanted to make your own bow and arrows, learn to create fire using friction, or mix up glue and dyes from the natural resources that surround us, then this is the book for you. John Rhyder has taught traditional woodcraft skills for several decades and can now teach you in this no-nonsense, amusing and easy-to-follow guide. Woodcraft will take you on a practical learning journey - from the safe use of tools and sustainable harvesting of wood to the subsequent uses for roots, bark and timber. This step-by-step account is suitable for the student of woodcraft, the naturalist and the practitioner of bushcraft skills.

The classic text on coppicing and woodland crafts, redesigned for a new generation of woodspeople. If you’re lucky enough to have access to a patch of woodland, this book contains everything you need to set up, manage and profit from a thriving coppice. But even if you don’t, there’s plenty of information on traditional woodland crafts here for you: learn how to work with bought coppiced wood to make all manner of products, from the archetypal besom broom and humble tent pegs to sturdy gate hurdles. Woodland crafts expert Ray Tabor guides you through a range of heritage woodland conservation methods. He introduces the best tools for each job – the time-honoured woodsman’s billhook being the most important of all – and the devices you’ll need. He shows how to select wood for each purpose, from ash, traditionally used for tool handles, to chestnut for making perfect fences. There’s also an in-depth exploration of the essential art of riving (splitting wooden poles by hand). Full of invaluable advice, historical information, useful diagrams and evocative photography, this book will help you reconnect to nature and the environment, and gain immense pleasure from creating beautiful crafted products using heritage methods.

Forests are considered the lungs of the planet, as they consume and store carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. These biomes, defined as ecological communities dominated by long-lived woody vegetation, historically have provided an economic foundation for growing nations, supplying wood for buildings, firewood for fuel, and land for expanding cities and farms. For centuries, industrial nations in Europe and the United States have relied on large tracts of forestland for economic prosperity. The research presented in this book reveals that population pressures are causing considerable environmental distress in even the most remote forest areas. Three detailed case studies are presented. The first provides an assessment of illegal logging deep in South America's Amazon rain forest, a region closely tied to food and product demands thousands of miles away. The second examines the effect of increased hunting in Central Africa's Congo forest, which threatens wildlife, especially mammal species with slower reproductive cycles. Finally the third describes encroachment on old-growth tropical forests on the Southern Pacific island of Borneo, which today is better managed thanks to the collective planning and conservation efforts of the governments of Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Forests are considered the lungs of the planet, as they consume and store carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. These biomes, defined as ecological communities dominated by long-lived woody vegetation, historically have provided an economic foundation for growing nations, supplying wood for buildings, firewood for fuel, and land for expanding cities and farms. For centuries, industrial nations in Europe and the United States have relied on large tracts of forestland for economic prosperity. The research presented in this book reveals that population pressures are causing considerable environmental distress in even the most remote forest areas. Three detailed case studies are presented. The first provides an assessment of illegal logging deep in South America's Amazon rain forest, a region closely tied to food and product demands thousands of miles away. The second examines the effect of increased hunting in Central Africa's Congo forest, which threatens wildlife, especially mammal species with slower reproductive cycles. Finally the third describes encroachment on old-growth tropical forests on the Southern Pacific island of Borneo, which today is better managed thanks to the collective planning and conservation efforts of the governments of Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Forest degradation as a result of logging, shifting cultivation, agriculture and urban development is a major issue throughout the tropics. It leads to loss in soil fertility, water resources and biodiversity, as well as contributes to climate change. Efforts are therefore required to try to minimize further degradation and restore tropical forests in a sustainable way. This is the first research-based book to examine this problem in East Africa. The specific focus is on the forests of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, but the lessons learned are shown to be applicable to neighbouring countries and others in the tropics. A wide range of forest types are covered, from dry Miombo forest and afromontane forests, to forest-savannah mosaics and wet forest types. Current management practices are assessed and examples of good practice presented. The role of local people is also emphasized. The authors describe improved management and restoration through silviculture, plantation forestry and agroforestry, leading to improvements in timber production, biodiversity conservation and the livelihoods of local people.

How do you record the wildlife in a wood? This book explains ways to record the flora and fauna found in woodland and outlines the sources you can use to find out more about the history and management of an area. Whether you have just a few hours, or a few years, there are examples that you can follow to find out more about this important habitat. Woods include some of the richest terrestrial wildlife sites in Britain, but some are under threat and many are neglected, such that they are not as rich as they might be. If we are to protect them or increase their diversity we need first to know what species they contain, how they have come to be as they are, to understand how they fit into the wider landscape. Conservation surveys are the bedrock on which subsequent protection and management action is based. There is not one method that will be right for all situations and needs, so the methods discussed range from what one can find out online, to what can be seen on a general walk round a wood, to the insights that can come from more detailed survey and monitoring approaches. Fast-evolving techniques such as eDNA surveys and the use of LiDAR are touched on.

Forests have histories that need to be told. This examination of wood and woodlands in East and Southeast Asia brings together case studies from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sumatra to explore continuities in the history of forest management across these regions as well as the distinctive qualities of human-forest relations within each context. With a general introduction to forest histories in East and Southeast Asia and a multidisciplinary set of authors, The Cultivated Forest constructs alternative lineages of forest knowledge that aim to transcend the frameworks imposed by colonial or national histories. Across these regions, forests were sites of exploitation, contestation, and ritual just as they were in Europe and America. This volume puts studies of Asian forests into conversation with global forest histories.

In litter-strewn Epping Forest on the edge of London, might a writer find that magical moment of transcendence? He will certainly discover filthy graffiti and frightening dogs, as well as world-renowned artists and fading celebrities, robbers, lovers, ghosts and poets. But will he find himself? Or a version of himself he might learn something from?Strange Labyrinth is a quest narrative arguing that we shouldn't get lost in order to find ourselves, but solely to accept that we are lost in the first place. It is a singular blend of landscape writing, political indignation, cultural history and wit from a startling new voice in non-fiction.

Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face--including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation--are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests' past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces--from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems--has masked a significant contemporary trend of woodland resurgence, even in the forests of the tropics. Focusing on the history and current use of woodlands from India to the Amazon, The Social Lives of Forests attempts to build a coherent view of forests sited at the nexus of nature, culture, and development. With chapters covering the effects of human activities on succession patterns in now-protected Costa Rican forests; the intersection of gender and knowledge in African shea nut tree markets; and even the unexpectedly rich urban woodlands of Chicago, this book explores forests as places of significant human action, with complex institutions, ecologies, and economies that have transformed these landscapes in the past and continue to shape them today. From rain forests to timber farms, the face of forests--how we define, understand, and maintain them--is changing.

Forest Management and Planning, Second Edition, addresses contemporary forest management planning issues, providing a concise, focused resource for those in forest management. The book is intermixed with chapters that concentrate on quantitative subjects, such as economics and linear programming, and qualitative chapters that provide discussions of important aspects of natural resource management, such as sustainability. Expanded coverage includes a case study of a closed canopy, uneven-aged forest, new forest plans from South America and Oceania, and a new chapter on scenario planning and climate change adaptation.

A spectacularly illustrated journey into the intimate communities that native trees share with animals, insects, fungi, and microbes You can tell a lot about a tree from the company it keeps. James Nardi guides you through the innermost unseen world that trees share with a wondrous array of creatures. With their elaborate immune responses, trees recruit a host of allies as predators and parasites to defend against uninvited advances from organisms that chew on leaves, drain sap, and bore into wood. Microbial life thrives in the hidden spaces of leaf scales, twigs, and bark, while birds, mammals, and insects benefit from the more visible resources trees provide. In return, animals help with pollination, seed dispersal, and recycling of nutrients. The Hidden Company That Trees Keep blends marvelous storytelling with beautiful illustrations and the latest science to reveal how the lives of trees are intertwined with those of their diverse companions. Features a wealth of richly detailed drawings accompanied by breathtaking images of microscopic landscapes on leaf, bark, and root surfaces Includes informative fact boxes Draws on new discoveries in biology and natural history Written by one of the world's leading naturalists

The loss of biodiversity is a major environmental problem in nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. This loss is accelerating driven by climate change, as well as by other causes including agricultural exploitation, fragmentation and degradation triggered by land use changes. The crucial issue under debate is the impact on the welfare of current and future population, and the role of humans in the exploitation of natural resources. This is of particular importance in Central America, which it is amongst the richest and most threatened biodiversity regions on the Earth, and where the loss of ecosystems strongly affects its socio-economic vulnerability. This book addresses the impacts of climate and land-use change on tropical forest ecosystems in this important region, and assesses the expected economic costs if no policy action is taken, under different future scenarios and for different geographical scales. This innovative collection utilises both theoretical approaches and empirical results to provide a conceptual framework for an integrated analysis of climate and land-use change impacts on forest ecosystems and related economic effects, offering insight into the complex relationship between ecosystems and benefits to humans. This important contribution to forest ecosystems and climate change provides invaluable reading for students and scholars in the fields of environmental and ecological economics, environmental science and forestry, natural resource management, agriculture and climate change.