Over the past decade, a sea change has occurred in the field of forestry. A vastly increased understanding of how ecological systems function has transformed the science from one focused on simplifying systems, producing wood, and managing at the stand-level to one concerned with understanding and managing complexity, providing a wide range of ecological goods and services, and managing across broad landscapes.Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is an authoritative and multidisciplinary examination of the current state of forestry and its relation to the emergent field of ecosystem management. Drawing upon the expertise of top professionals in the field, it provides an up-to-date synthesis of principles of ecosystem management and their implications for forest policy. Leading scientists, including Malcolm Hunter, Jr., Bruce G. Marcot, James K. Agee, Thomas R. Crow, Robert J. Naiman, John C. Gordon, R.W. Behan, Steven L. Yaffee, and many others examine topics that are central to the future of forestry: new understandings of ecological processes and principles, from stand structure and function to disturbance processes and the movement of organisms across landscapes challenges to long-held assumptions: the rationale for clearcutting, the wisdom of short rotations, the exclusion of fire traditional tools in light of expanded goals for forest landscapes managing at larger spatial scales, including practical information and ideas for managing large landscapes over long time periods the economic, organizational, and political issues that are critical to implementing successful ecosystem management and developing institutions to transform knowledge into action Featuring a 16-page center section with color photographs that illustrate some of the best on-the-ground examples of ecosystem management from around the world, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is the definitive text on managing ecosystems. It provides a compelling case for thinking creatively beyond the bounds of traditional forest resource management, and will be essential reading for students; scientists working in state, federal, and private research institutions; public and private forest managers; staff members of environmental/conservation organizations; and policymakers.

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice This acclaimed textbook is the most comprehensive available in the field of forest ecology. Designed for advanced students of forest science, ecology, and environmental studies, it is also an essential reference for forest ecologists, foresters, and land managers. The authors provide an inclusive survey of boreal, temperate, and tropical forests with an emphasis on ecological concepts across scales that range from global to landscape to microscopic. Situating forests in the context of larger landscapes, they reveal the complex patterns and processes observed in tree-dominated habitats. The updated and expanded second edition covers • Conservation • Ecosystem services • Climate change • Vegetation classification • Disturbance • Species interactions • Self-thinning • Genetics • Soil influences • Productivity • Biogeochemical cycling • Mineralization • Effects of herbivory • Ecosystem stability

Arguing that the complexity of policy-making in the forest sector has led many analysts to focus exclusively on specific sectoral activities or jurisdictions, this collection of essays offers a simplifying framework of analysis.

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.

Key researchers present newly emerging approaches to computer simulation models of large, forest landscapes.