Sustainable Forest Management provides the necessary material to educate students about forestry and the contemporary role of forests in ecosystems and society. This comprehensive textbook on the concept and practice of sustainable forest management sets the standard for practice worldwide. Early chapters concentrate on conceptual aspects, relating sustainable forestry management to international policy. In particular, they consider the concept of criteria and indicators and how this has determined the practice of forest management, taken here to be the management of forested lands and of all ecosystems present on such lands. Later chapters are more practical in focus, concentrating on the management of the many values associated with forests. Overall the book provides a major new synthesis which will serve as a textbook for undergraduates of forestry as well as those from related disciplines such as ecology or geography who are taking a course in forests or natural resource management.

Restoration of our national forests benefits the environment and creates jobs in rural communities. Increasing the pace of restoration of the Nation's forests is critically needed to address a variety of threats including fire, climate change, the bark beetle infestation, and others -- to the health of our forest ecosystems, watersheds, and forest-dependent communities. The Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS) within the Department of the Interior have increasingly promoted landscape-scale forest restoration as a way to improve forest health. Through landscape-scale projects, agencies can treat tens or hundreds of thousands of acres, in contrast to projects commonly of under 1,000 acres. Such projects must comply with NEPA by assessing the effects of major federal actions that significantly affect the environment. This book examines the number of such projects the agencies have conducted and how they are scoped; the actions taken by agencies to track the projects' progress; successes and challenges experienced by agencies; and steps taken by agencies to help increase NEPA efficiency for such projects.

The Amazon forest is one of the world's most complex, unknown and threatened ecosystems that holds a considerable part of biodiverse species in different groups. This ecosystem needs greater scientific attention so that we can better understand the features of the fauna, flora and microbiota to conserve species before they disappear. Thus, this book addresses issues about resources of the largest rainforest of the world. Microbiota, fauna and flora are investigated differently, providing information of ecological interest, pharmaceutical and/or economic importance. Specialists and scientists that work in Amazonia can access new information about the species that inhabit this region with unprecedented advances on ecological and behavioral aspects of apple snails, meat yield and nutritive potential of crustacean species, tadpole knowledge, mitefaun in agroecosystems, pharmaceutical potential of plant species, computational models for flora cultivation, and reviews of microbiota composition of Amazonia. Scientists will acquire knowledge about aromatic plants from the Amazon and their applications, which include uses in perfumes, fragrances, cosmetics, phytopharmaceuticals, insecticides, fungicides, bactericides, larvicides and others. Regarding the microbiota of different Amazonian environments, the book is intended to present information about applications related to mycorrhizal fungi and endophytic microorganisms.

Forests possess many components and processes that provide an array of ecosystem goods and services: timber, energy and water savings, pollution reduction, livestock forage, habitat for plants and animals, recreation opportunities, aesthetic landscapes, and biodiversity that enhance people's quality of life. Forest resources also support local and regional economies through jobs and income generated from forestry, agriculture, tourism, and locational decisions of businesses, retirees, and others. The capability of a forest to provide these and many other ecosystem services and to maintain the quality of those ecosystem services depends on its health. A healthy forest is an essential component of a healthy ecosystem -- a natural system that is capable of self-renewal, resilient in its response to disturbances (such as pest, fire, and other non-human and human-caused disturbances), and able to sustain the integrity of the natural and cultural benefits derived from it. This book updates the literature review and synthesis of economic valuation studies on the impacts of forest insect pests by Rosenberger and Smith. This book also discusses the concept of ecosystem services; identifies key elements of each study; examines areas of future research; and includes appendices that further explain non-market valuation methods, a narrative of each study, and tables that summarise each study.

Natural resource policy and management in the United States often are characterized by limited budgets and multiple, and sometimes competing, societal objectives. The use and management of forest lands in the U.S. involve tradeoffs between the current and potential benefits public and private lands provide to society and the effects the policy and management actions have on the resiliency of natural systems. However, translating society's multiple forestry objectives into policies and management actions has become more difficult as society's objectives have become more complex. This book characterizes the concept of ecosystem services as it could apply to national forests; describes the value of an ecosystem service approach and provides examples of how management actions support the provision of these services; compares the Deschutes National Forest's current accomplishment reporting system to ecosystem service outcomes that potentially result from management activities; identifies partners with potential to collaboratively plan, fund, or implement projects to enhance or conserve ecosystem services; describes current research efforts to support management application of the ecosystem service concept; and identifies research needs.

For over a century, Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) have provided critical science on the ecosystems and management activities of the National Forest System. Forest Service EFRs play a unique and important role both within the agency as well as in the broader field of land management. The goal of EFRs is to generate knowledge that benefits both public land managers and private land owners. This goal is achieved through research projects on pressing natural resource topics such as hydrology, fire dynamics, range management, erosion, climate change, silviculture, and forest regeneration. EFRs are uniquely situated for such research due to their relative stability and long-term datasets. This book specifically discusses the role of EFRs in understanding and adapting to climate change.

Fossil records indicate the Neotropical Dry Forests had a more continuous distribution in the recent geological past, especially in the late Pleistocene, more precisely at the end of the last glacial period. Seasonal Deciduous Forests are remnants of a broader continuous distribution that was present in the past, ranging from North-Eastern Brazil to Argentina in the Pleistocene dry period. This currently fragmented structure is the result of the dry, cold climate that caused the retraction of Wet Forests to riversides and the spread of seasonal forests. This book discusses the ecology, species diversity and sustainable management of dry forests. The topics include a biogeographical overview of the "lianescent clade" of violaceae in the Neotropical region; diversity and distribution of hymenoptera aculeate in mid-western Brazilian dry forests; the Brazilian "caatinga"; changes in the labile and recalcitrant organic matter fractions due to transformation of semi-deciduous dry tropical forest to pasture in the western llanos, Venezuela; ecology and management of the dry forests and savannas of the western Chaco region, Argentina; predicting pasture security in rangeland districts of Kenya using 1 km resolution spot vegetation sensor ndvi data.

In the tradition of John Vaillant's modern classic The Golden Spruce comes a story of the unlikely survival of one of the largest and oldest trees in Canada. On a cool morning in the winter of 2011, a logger named Dennis Cronin was walking through a stand of old-growth forest near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. He came across a massive Douglas fir the height of a twenty-storey building. Instead of allowing the tree to be felled, he tied a ribbon around the trunk, bearing the words "Leave Tree." The forest was cut but the tree was saved. The solitary Douglas fir, soon known as Big Lonely Doug, controversially became the symbol of environmental activists and their fight to protect the region's dwindling old-growth forests. Originally featured as a long-form article in The Walrus that garnered a National Magazine Award (Silver), Big Lonely Doug weaves the ecology of old-growth forests, the legend of the West Coast's big trees, the turbulence of the logging industry, the fight for preservation, the contention surrounding ecotourism, First Nations land and resource rights, and the fraught future of these ancient forests around the story of a logger who saved one of Canada's last great trees.

Forest and woodland ecosystems in the world serve important ecological functions and also contribute to the economic, aesthetic and spiritual health of humans. In this book, the authors discuss the structure, species diversity and sustainable management of woodlands across the globe. Topics include changes in composition and threats to the sustainable management of woodlands in Portugal; the role and diversity of soil fauna in woodlands; climate change and forest fires in the Ave Region of Northwest Portugal; drivers of deforestation and the potential for carbon trading in the Miombo woodlands of Zambia; soil microbial diversity in the dry woodlands of Central-Western Argentina; and developing silvicultural systems based on disturbance-recovery knowledge of the Southern African Miombo woodlands.

"An inspiring reminder of the incredible resource that is our public lands." --Brendan Leonard, author of The Camping Life and Surviving the Great Outdoors Across 193 million acres of forests, mountains, deserts, watersheds, and grasslands, national forests provide a multitude of uses as diverse as America itself. They welcome 170 million visitors each year to hike, bike, paddle, ski, fish, and hunt. But "the people's lands" offer more than just recreation. Lost habitats are recovered, timber is harvested, and endangered wildlife is protected as part of the Forest Service's enduring mission. In Our National Forests, Greg Peters gives an inside look at America's most important public lands and the people committed to protecting them and ensuring access for all. From the Forest Service growing millions of seedlings in the West each year, to their efforts to save the hellbender salamander in Appalachia, the story spans the breadth of the country and its diverse ecology. And people are at the center, whether the dedicated Forest Service members or the everyday citizens who support and tend to the protected lands near their homes. This complete look at America's national forests--their triumphs, challenges, controversies, and vital programs--is a must-read for everyone interested in the history of America's most important public lands.

The coming global climate changes associated with the increase of atmospheric greenhouse effect, may disturb the natural carbon cycle in the biosphere and may lead to large-scale ecological consequences. The cognition of the mechanisms of environmental sustainability in changing climate is connected with studying the biotic regulation of the carbon cycle. Boreal forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle. This book expounds the regional-local prognostic conception as a scientific basis of monitoring forest ecosystems under global climatic changes. Predictive landscape-ecological scenarios of the nearest future of temperate forests and their paleogeographical analogues as a single system of global changes have been considered for the first time by the example of a large region -- the Volga River basin.

"Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests" reveals the remarkably diverse panoply of perils to tropical forests and their biota, with particular emphasis on recent dangers. William F. Laurance and Carlos A. Peres identify four categories of emerging threats: those that have only recently appeared, such as the virulent chytrid fungus that is decimating rainforest amphibians throughout the tropical world; those that are growing rapidly in importance, like destructive surface fires; those that are poorly understood, namely global warming and other climatic and atmospheric changes; and environmental synergisms, whereby two or more simultaneous threats - such as habitat fragmentation and wildfires, or logging and hunting - can dramatically increase local extinction of tropical species. In addition to documenting the vulnerability of tropical rainforests, the volume focuses on strategies for mitigating and combating emerging threats. A timely and compelling book intended for researchers, students, and conservation practitioners, "Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests" will interest anyone concerned about the fate of the world's most threatened tropical ecosystems.

Peter A. McCue examines intriguing reports of people experiencing uncanny events in Britain's woods and forests, from mysterious lights and strange animal encounters to ghostly experiences. Much of the reported witness testimony was obtained first-hand by McCue or other researchers. While he draws sceptical conclusions about some of the alleged incidents, he takes others seriously and considers possible explanations. Fully illustrated and written in McCue's inimitable style, Britain's Paranormal Forests will make you think again about your next walk in the woods.

Rain forests represent the world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity, and play a major role in regulating the global climate. They support the livelihoods of a substantial proportion of the world's population and are the source of many internationally traded commodities. They remain (despite decades of conservation attention) increasingly vulnerable to degradation and clearance, with profound though often uncertain future costs to global society. Understanding the ecology of these diverse biomes, and peoples' dependencies on them, is fundamental to their future management and conservation.
Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation introduces and explores what rain forests are, how they arose, what they contain, how they function, and how humans use and impact them. The book starts by introducing the variety of rain forest plants, fungi, microorganisms, and animals, emphasising the spectacular diversity that is the motivation for their conservation. The central chapters describe the origins of rain forest communities, the variety of rain forest formations, and their ecology and dynamics. The challenge of explaining the species richness of rain forest communities lies at the heart of ecological theory, and forms a common theme throughout. The book's final section considers historical and current interactions of humans and rain forests. It explores biodiversity conservation as well as livelihood security for the many communities that are dependent on rain forests - inextricable issues that represent urgent priorities for scientists, conservationists, and policy makers.

This book explores the role of trust in social struggles related to tropical forest preservation in El Peten, Guatemala. The author combines ethnographic exploration of how trust is formed in the local context with insights about postcolonial inequalities, which structure discourses on development and climate change in ways that exclude local actors. Empirically, the book follows the complicated engagements of local concession-holding forest communities with outside actors aiming to develop archaeology-based tourism in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. A central argument presented is that processes initiated for societal improvement need to be based on trusting relationships in order to be successful. This requires a context sensitive approach that takes into consideration how trust is formed and undermined in specific lifeworlds, as well as postcolonial inequalities. Theoretically, the book expands existing conceptualisations of trust and emphasises the potential for ethnographic research to further our understanding of this elusive phenomenon. "How do trust and mistrust permeate the fluid relations among communities living off the forests of northern Guatemala, outside stakeholders, and a global discourse of cultural heritage and climate change? This remarkable book by a pioneer of the anthropology of trust dissects a questionable development plan that threatens the rights and livelihood of a local population marginalized in a decision-making process aimed at protecting ancient archaeological sites, promoting tourism, and preserving the rain forest." - Antonius C. G. M. Robben, author of Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands "El Mirador is an extraordinary Mayan archaeological site in the jungles of northern Guatemala, accessible only by foot or helicopter. Poor mestizos, for whom the forest is home, have become expert tour guides and forest conservationists. Outsiders who view the ruins and forest as a resource primed for extraction have extravagant plans to "develop" the area. Ystanes offers a richly contextualized and theorized exploration of the struggles over caring for and living in and off this exceptional and fragile place, by focusing on the role of trust in the complex negotiations over its future and in identities more broadly. While showing how structural inequalities breed mistrust at every scale, this is a beautiful and nuanced take on existential questions of living in worlds shaped by violence and competition with historical knowledge, ecosystem survival, and livelihoods at stake." - Diane Nelson, Bass Chair and Eads Family Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA

Discover the Secrets and Beauty of the World's Rarest Trees Did you know that the resin of the dragon tree was so prized that it was used and traded as medicine by the Roman Empire? Or that the Bornean ironwood is one of the only timbers dense enough to sink in water? Trees have adapted to thrive on steep mountains, high in cloud forests, on dry savannahs, in parched deserts, and in tropical wetlands. Our own human history--and our future--are interwoven with the trees that define the character and environments of our green planet. Rare Trees offers a stunning visual presentation of 60 of the most fascinating, bizarre, and threatened tree species on the planet, from conifers to magnolias to oaks. With color photographs showing trees and their most unusual features, maps of growing regions, callouts of memorable facts, and examples of poignant cultural and historical uses by Indigenous populations, Rare Trees will give everyone who loves trees an armchair tour of unique specimens from around the globe. You will be inspired to help preserve this critical canopy of life.

Forest ecology includes within its scope the components and functions of forest ecosystems -- a community of organisms interacting with each other and with their physical environment. Forest ecosystems, which consist of bacteria, plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, soil, water and air, differ from other ecosystems in that they are dominated by trees and other woody vegetation. Each of these components plays an important role in the function and health of the forest. This book presents important research in the field.

This highly topical study of tropical deforestation reports on the first phase of a large, integrated, multi-institutional, and team-based study. Based in Mexico, it is designed to understand and project land changes in a development frontier that pits the rapidly growing needs of smallholder farmers to cut down forests for cultivation against federally sponsored initiatives committed to various international programmes of forest preservation and complementary economic programmes.

Wildland fires are among the most complicated environmental phenomena to model. Fire behavior models are commonly used to predict the direction and rate of spread of wildland fires based on fire history, fuel, and environmental conditions; however, more sophisticated computational fluid dynamic models are now being developed. This quantitative analysis of fire as a fluid dynamic phenomenon embedded in a highly turbulent flow is beginning to reveal the combined interactions of the vegetative structure, combustion-driven convective effects, and atmospheric boundary layer processes. This book provides an overview of the developments in modeling wildland fire dynamics and the key dynamical processes involved. Mathematical and dynamical principles are presented, and the complex phenomena that arise in wildland fire are discussed. Providing a state-of-the-art survey, it is a useful reference for scientists, researchers, and graduate students interested in wildland fire behavior from a broad range of fields.

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists, and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Currently, about 40,000 ecotourists per year visit the Cloud Forest, as perhaps the archetypal high-altitude rain forest. This book pulls together and synthesizes the information about this ecosystem and the biota contained therein.

This open access book synthesizes leading-edge science and management information about forest and rangeland soils of the United States. It offers ways to better understand changing conditions and their impacts on soils, and explores directions that positively affect the future of forest and rangeland soil health. This book outlines soil processes and identifies the research needed to manage forest and rangeland soils in the United States. Chapters give an overview of the state of forest and rangeland soils research in the Nation, including multi-decadal programs (chapter 1), then summarizes various human-caused and natural impacts and their effects on soil carbon, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and biological diversity (chapters 2-5). Other chapters look at the effects of changing conditions on forest soils in wetland and urban settings (chapters 6-7). Impacts include: climate change, severe wildfires, invasive species, pests and diseases, pollution, and land use change. Chapter 8 considers approaches to maintaining or regaining forest and rangeland soil health in the face of these varied impacts. Mapping, monitoring, and data sharing are discussed in chapter 9 as ways to leverage scientific and human resources to address soil health at scales from the landscape to the individual parcel (monitoring networks, data sharing Web sites, and educational soils-centered programs are tabulated in appendix B). Chapter 10 highlights opportunities for deepening our understanding of soils and for sustaining long-term ecosystem health and appendix C summarizes research needs. Nine regional summaries (appendix A) offer a more detailed look at forest and rangeland soils in the United States and its Affiliates.

This new edition of Whitmore's classic introduction to tropical rain forests has been comprehensively revised and updated, reflecting the changes which have taken place since it was first published in 1990. The sections on human impact have been extended, including a new global assessment of deforestation, and details of new research on biodiversity and conservation. The book remains unique in linking rain forest biology and ecology with silviculture, and with concerns over sustainable resource utilization and the future of the tropical rain forests. Accessibly written and illustrated throughout, it is a must for biology and geography students, and anyone who seeks to know more about the nature and importance of the world's tropical rain forests.

This book will draw attention to the residuals in pan-boreal forest fires and synthesize the state of knowledge. It will do so by: (a) Examining the concept of fire residuals from different perspectives, (b) Reviewing the growing body of scientific literature on the topic, (c) Conceptualizing the process of residual formation in relation to scale of fire disturbance, (d) Discussing the roles of fire residuals in ecological processes, (e) Describing approaches and methods of studying fire residuals, (f) Compiling and summarizing what is known about fire residual vegetation with respect to their extent, spatial patterns, and temporal changes, (g) Discussing how the knowledge of fire residuals is applied in forest management, including social perspective, and (h) Synthesizing the state of knowledge, identifying its uncertainties and gaps, and proposing research hypotheses. The authors use pan-boreal scientific literature on boreal fire residuals as well as fire behaviour, fire ecology, habitat ecology, and geochemical processes. For readers this book will be a reference for knowledge to date and a meta-analysis of research trends during the past few decades. In addition, the authors judiciously include views constructed from their observations and research experience, from boreal Canada, when they synthesize and conceptualize the knowledge. They also incorporate information extracted from their discussions and interactions with North American and European ecologists, forest managers, and conservationists to provide insight to different views and perspectives on the fire residuals of the boreal forest system. This book will inform researchers and students who study boreal forest ecology, as well as policymakers and forest managers who apply forest ecological knowledge in forest management.This book provides a review and coalescence of the current knowledge of boreal forest fire residuals, which at present is sporadic and has not been unified or synthesized. Moreover, these are presently viewed myopically and parochially, rather than holistically. The intent of the synthesis is to identify knowledge uncertainties and gaps and propose topics for future research. Most importantly, it brings together fire behaviour, ecological scale, vegetation ecology, and conservation biology to conceptualize forest fire residuals. Although focused on boreal forests, the contents and principles presented are also be pertinent to other large-scale fire driven forest systems, such as dry montane forests in North America and Australian eucalypt forests. This book will add to the current knowledge base by providing a source of significant literature to-date, an in-depth examination of baseline concepts of forest fire residuals, as well as questions and research ideas to address the identified gaps. The timing is ideal because the knowledge base is beginning to expand and the interest in the topic is increasing: such a synthesis would provide an important foundation for future advances in this very relevant topical area. The book is a compact, yet comprehensive, dissertation of remnant vegetation in boreal forest fires with respect to their formation, role in ecological processes, applied importance, and a synthesis of state-of-the-knowledge and future research directions. The scope is boreal forests worldwide, including North America, Europe, and Asia. Brief TOC: Why the interest in boreal fire residuals; what are fire residuals; how are fire residuals formed; what are the ecological roles of the fire residuals; what is the role of residuals in forest management applications; synthesis, knowledge, uncertainties and research needs.