This book contains 28 chapters grouped into six sections providing information on forests interact with the other components of the physical and natural world with the human society, and how we could manage forests globally to make the most of their contribution to mitigation of climate change along with the established objective of sustainable management to maximize the full range of economic and non-market benefits which forests provide. Topics covered include: introduction on the interaction between forests and climate change; climate change, forestry and science-policy interface; forestry options for contributing to climate change mitigation; options for adaptation due to impacts of climate change on forests; current and future policy of national and international frameworks; and implications for future forestry and related environmental and development policy.

Climate changes, particularly warming trends, have been recorded around the globe. For many countries, these changes in climate have become evident through insect epidemics (e.g., Mountain Pine Beetle epidemic in Western Canada, bark beetle in secondary spruce forests in Central Europe), water shortages and intense forest fires in the Mediterranean countries (e.g., 2005 droughts in Spain), and unusual storm activities (e.g., the 2004 South-East Asia Tsunami). Climate changes are expected to impact vegetation as manifested by changes in vegetation extent, migration of species, tree species composition, growth rates, and mortality. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has included discussions on how forests may be impacted, and how they may be used to mitigate the impacts of changes in climate, to possibly slow the rate of change. This book provides current scientific information on the biological and economical impacts of climate changes in forest environments, as well as information on how forest management activities might mitigate these impacts, particularly through carbon sequestration. Case studies from a wide geographic range are presented. This information is beneficial to managers and researchers interested in climate change and impacts upon forest environments and economic activities. This volume, which forms part of Springer’s book series Managing Forest Ecosystems, presents state-of-the-art research results, visions and theories, as well as specific methods for sustainable forest management in changing climatic conditions.

The aim of this book is to provide an accessible overview for advanced students, resource professionals such as land managers, and policy makers to acquaint themselves with the established science, management practices and policies that facilitate sequestration and allow for the storage of carbon in forests. The book has value to the reader to better understand: a) carbon science and management of forests and wood products; b) the underlying social mechanisms of deforestation; and c) the policy options in order to formulate a cohesive strategy for implementing forest carbon projects and ultimately reducing emissions from forest land use.

Modern Forests is an environmental, institutional, and cultural history of forestry in colonial eastern India. By carefully examining the influence of regional political formations and biogeographic processes on land and forest management, this book offers an analysis of the interrelated social and biophysical factors that influenced landscape change. Through a cultural analysis of powerful landscape representations, Modern Forests reveals the contention, debates, and uncertainty that persisted for two hundred years of colonial rule as forests were identified, classified, and brought under different regimes of control and were transformed to serve a variety of imperial and local interests. The author examines the regionally varied conditions that generated widely different kinds of forest management systems, and the ways in which certain ideas and forces became dominant at various times. Through this emphasis on regional socio-political processes and ecologies, the author offers a new way to write environmental history. Instead of making a sharp distinction between third-world and first-world experiences in forest management, the book suggests a potential for cross-continental comparative studies through regional analyses. The book also offers an approach to historical anthropology that does not make apolitical separations between foreign and indigenous views of the world of nature, insisting instead that different cultural repertoires for discerning the natural, and using it, can be fashioned out of shared concerns within and across social groups. The politics of such cultural construction, the book argues, must be studied through institutional histories and ethnographies of statemaking. In conclusion, the author offers a genealogy of development as it can be traced from forest conservation in colonial eastern India.

Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort over the next five years to reverse tropical deforestation. Why Forests? Why Now? synthesizes the latest evidence on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decisionmakers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

The inclusion of forests as potential biological sinks in the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1997 has attracted international attention and again has put scientific and political focus on the world's forests, regarding their state and development. The international discus sion induced by the Kyoto Protocol has clearly shown that not only the tropical rain forests are endangered by man's activities, but also that the forest ecosystems of boreal, temperate, mediterranean and subtropical regions have been drastically modified. Deforestation on a large scale, burning, over-exploitation, and the degra dation of the biological diversity are well-known symptoms in forests all over the world. This negative development happens in spite of the already existing knowledge of the benefits of forests on global energy and water regimes, the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and other elements as well as on the biological and cultural diversity. The reasons why man does not take care of forests properly are manifold and complex and there is no easy solution how to change the existing negative trends. One reason that makes it so difficult to assess the impacts of human activity on the future development of forests is the large time scale in which forests react, ranging from decades to centuries.

Effects of Climate Change on Forests: An Evidence-Based Primer for Sustainable Management of Temperate and Mediterranean Forests presents concepts, case studies and the application of theories about forest management under climate change. It provides invaluable insight to how forest planning and management tie into the ecological functioning and resilience of the forest, and does so by utilizing a concept weakly implemented in traditional forest planning: namely, by following the variability in growth, and other processes, over time. This shift in focus better incorporates the services provided by forests, and allows for better adaptation planning to help temperate forests not only survive but thrive in the face of climate change. Real-world case studies demonstrate how to effectively manage temperate forests under climate change, using the results of evidence-based research. - Outlines innovative practices to evaluate and assess forest management plans - Provides guidelines and criteria to help forest planning, forest sustainability, and forest management adapt to climate change - Assists the reader to develop comprehensive forest management plans, complete with sylvicultural interventions, which account for the uncertainties of climate change