The International Energy Agency Bioenergy Agreement was initiated as the Forestry Energy Agreement in 1978. It was expanded in 1986 to form the Bioenergy Agreement. Since that time the Agreement has thrived with some fifteen countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and the CEC) currently being signatories. The objective of the Agreement is to establish increased programme and project cooperation between the participants in the field of bioenergy. The environmental consequences of intensive forest harvesting have been the subject of intense interest for the Agreement from its initiation. This interest was formulated as a Cooperative Project under the Forestry Energy Agreement in 1984. It developed further under each of the subsequent three-year Tasks of the Bioenergy Agreement (Task III, Activity 3 "Nutritional consequences of intensive forest harvesting on site productivity", Task VI, Activity 6 "Environmental impacts of harvesting" and more recently Task IX, Activity 4 "Environmental impacts of intensive harvesting". The work has been supported by five main countries from within the Bioenergy Agreement: Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, UK, and USA. The continued work has resulted in a significant network of scientists work ing together towards a common objective - that of generating a better under standing of the processes involved in nutrient cycling and the development of management regimes which will maintain or enhance long term site productivity.

Due to the long-term planning horizons and the great variety of natural, economic, and operational hazards affecting forest ecosystems, uncertainty and multiple risk are typical aspects of forest management. Applications of risk analysis are surprisingly rare, in spite of the rich assortment of sophisticated forest planning tools that are available today. The objective of this particular volume within the book series Managing Forest Ecosystems is to present state-of-the-art research results, concepts, and techniques regarding the assessment and evaluation of natural hazards and the analysis of risk and uncertainty relating to forest management. Various aspects of risk analysis are covered, including examples of specific modelling tools. The book is divided into three sections covering ecological perspectives, applications in engineering and planning, and methods applicable to economics and policy.

Trees have been around for more than 370 million years, and today there are about 80 thousand species of them, occupying 3.5 billion hectares worldwide, including 250 million ha of commercial plantations. While forests can provide tremendous environmental, social, and economic benefits to nations, they also affect the hydrologic cycle in different ways. As the demand for water grows and local precipitation patterns change due to global warming, plantation forestry has encountered an increasing number of water-related conflicts worldwide. This document provides a country-by-country summary of the current state of knowledge on the relationship between forest management and water resources. Based on available research publications, the Editor-in-Chief of this document contacted local scientists from countries where the impact of forest management on water resources is an issue, inviting them to submit a chapter.