The quality of British broadleaved stands is only moderate and at a time when there is an insufficient supply of quality timber to satisfy home demand it is imperative that silviculture practices are improved. The basic principle of growing quality timber sometimes needs stressing as growers are being encouraged to achieve a wide range of objectives such as landscape, wildlife conservation and recreation. The aim of this Handbook is to focus attention on a single objective: growing high quality hardwood. It expands one aspect of Bulletin 62, Silviculture of Broadleaved Woodland and underlines that quality timber practices do not need to be achieved at the expense of other objectives.

Ecological and economic considerations recently increased the interest in growing valuable broadleaved tree species. Although the demand for valuable timber is growing, and there is a notable interest among forest owners and farmers to grow valuable broad leaved tree species, the current level of knowledge about these species is insufficient. More information on how to grow valuable broadleaved species to obtain high-quality wood and more research on new options for forest management is needed. This book covers various relevant aspects of growing valuable broadleaved trees in an interdisciplinary approach. The disciplines are represented by a consortium of experts and professionals in different disciplines of forest sciences and related areas. They describe the state of the art in their research fields.

Functional Ecology of Woodlands is firmly based on the factors which govern the composition of woodland communities, but goes on to explore the dynamics of interactions between various ecosystem components. This is an authoritative text on the functioning of forest ecosystems, which will also assist readers to reach informed decisions about issues such as the greenhouse effect, acid precipitation, the greening of cities and agroforestry.

Professor John Harper, in his recent Population Biology of Plants (1977), made a comment and asked a question which effectively states the theme of this book. Noting that 'one of the consequences of the development of the theory of vegetational climax has been to guide the observer's mind forwards', i. e. that 'vegetation is interpreted asa stage on the way to something', he commented that 'it might be more healthy and scientifically more sound to look more often backwards and search for the explanation of the present in the past, to explain systems in relation to their history rather than their goal'. He went on to contrast the 'disaster theory' of plant succession, which holds that communities are a response to the effects of past disasters, with the 'climax theory', that they are stages in the approach to a climax state, and then asked 'do we account most completely for the characteristics of a population by a knowledge of its history or of its destiny?' Had this question been put to R. S. Adamson, E. J. Salisbury, A. G. Tansley or A. S. Watt, who are amongst the giants of the first forty years of woodland ecology in Britain, their answer would surely have been that understanding lies in a knowledge of destiny. Whilst not unaware of the historical facts of British woodlands, they were preoccupied with ideas of natural succession and climax, and tended to interpret their observations in these terms.

This book contains nine chapters providing a synthesis of the multiple uses, impacts and sustainability of planted forests by looking at the past, outlining the present situation and highlights the outlook and issues for the future. In addition, the policy, institutional and ownership issues in planted forests are also covered.