With an increasing pressure on forested landscapes, conservation areas may fail to maintain biodiversity if they are not supported by the surrounding managed forest matrix. Worldwide, forests are managed by one of two broad approaches-even- and uneven-aged silviculture. In recent decades, there has ...

Most suggestions for adapting forest management in times of rapid global change have focused on tree regeneration, mortality, and productivity under predicted future climates. Adaptation to other aspects of global change, such as invasive species or changes in social settings, has received much...

The importance of tree genetic variability in the ability of forests to respond and adapt to environmental changes is crucial in forest management and conservation. Along with genetics, recent advances have highlighted "epigenetics" as an emerging and promising field of research for the...

This chapter describes the biological issues of forest stand dynamics, in particular those pertinent to boreal forests. The technological, environmental, economic and social issues related to various silvicultural practices are discussed. Examples of silvicultural systems (with an emphasis on novel ...

Because of their scarcity, protected areas alone cannot maintain biodiversity. Therefore, it is necessary to create conditions appropriate for plants and wildlife in managed landscapes. We compared the effects of different intensities of forest management on functional responses of vascular...

This paper discusses silvicultural approaches that promote or maintain structural attributes of old-growth forests at the forest stand level in: (a) current old-growth forests managed for timber production to retain structural elements; (b) current old-growth forests requiring regular, minor...

Human impacts on Earth's ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affecting the resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide and the provision of important...

This book, comprised of 23 chapters on sustainable management of boreal forests, is divided into five parts: (1) goals of sustainable forest management; (2) social and economic dimensions of sustainability; (3) forest ecology and management; (4) minimizing impacts of forest use and fibre...

Given the uncertainty of global environmental changes, forest managers need reliable and science-based tools to support planning decisions. To evaluate the state of forests as well as the outcomes of new management practices aimed at fostering the adaptive capacity of forest ecosystems, methods and ...

Retention forestry implies that biological legacies like dead and living trees are deliberately selected and retained beyond harvesting cycles to benefit biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This model has been applied for several decades in even-aged, clearcutting (CC) systems but less so in...