How Should We Sustain Future Forests Under Extreme Risk?

Economic Benefits ◽

Extreme Risk ◽

Pest Outbreaks ◽

Pine Beetle ◽

History Of ◽

Sustained Yield ◽

In this paper we examine the implications of managing for sustained yield in a world characterized by growing risk and uncertainty. We review the history of sustained yield (SY) forestry in North America with its emphasis on economic benefits and the persistence of the SY paradigm today, despite a publicized shift towards managing for a wider range of forest values called Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). We show that current forest management goals around sustainability as well as SFM indicators are still predicated on maximizing harvest levels and timber flows. We build a simple model to explore the implications of SY under extreme (fat-tailed) risk assumptions to show that maximizing a level of harvest without adequately accounting for risk leads towards the depletion of the forest stock with a corresponding decline in the forest economy. We discuss these results in relation to real-world events such as the increase in catastrophic fires and pest outbreaks like the Mountain Pine Beetle in Western Canada. We then examine the theoretical and practical implications that flow from this model and analysis.

Assessing forest management strategies under a mountain pine beetle attack in Alberta: exploring the impacts

Canadian Journal of Forest Research ◽

10.1139/x10-006 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 597-610 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Anne-Hélène Mathey ◽

Harry Nelson

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Mountain Pine Beetle ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Timber Supply ◽

Growing Stock ◽

Management Objectives ◽

Mountain Pine ◽

Resource Managers ◽

Recourse Approach ◽

Pine Beetle

We explore how forest resource managers can respond to a potential outbreak of mountain pine beetle ( Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, 1902) by assessing how well different forest management strategies achieve various management objectives over time. Strategies include targeting at-risk stands as well as increasing harvest levels. Outcomes are evaluated on the basis of volume flows, net revenues, and the age class structure of the ending inventory. We use a spatially and temporally explicit model to simulate forest management outcomes and consider two different scenarios, one in which the attack occurs early and one where it is delayed. The model utilizes a planning with recourse approach in which the firm can reevaluate its harvesting schedule following the attack. We use company data from west-central Alberta for a 40-year planning exercise. The timing of the attack resulted in small differences in timber supply. However, most strategies performed better financially under an early attack, which limits the harvest of marginal stands. Increasing harvest levels performed better in economic terms but resulted in a very young growing stock with little old forest. The success of any strategy is linked to the timing of the attack and how it affects the growing stock, subsequently impacting timber and revenue flows.

Community forestry, Italian style: The Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc74385-3 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 74 (3) ◽

pp. 385-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Peter N. Duinker ◽

Reino E. Pulkki

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Community Forestry ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Forest Stewardship Council ◽

Community Forest ◽

Community Forests ◽

Wood Processing ◽

History Of ◽

Forest Stewardship

In June 1997, we visited the Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme (MCF), a community forest in the Alps of northern Italy. We have prepared this article to help broaden the perspectives of Forestry Chronicle readers on community forests and what they mean in various parts of the world. We first describe the area and its forests, and then give a brief history of the MCF. Then we review the forest-management strategies used in this Norway spruce forest, and summarize the logging and wood-processing activities of the enterprise. We continue with a comparison of this community forest with three community forests in Canada, concluding that generalization on what makes a community forest successful is dangerous — each situation is unique. Finally, given that the MCF recently won permission to use the eco-label of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), we discuss our perceptions of how the MCF operation does and does not meet the FSC's Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship. Despite several shortcomings, we believe that the MCF is in most respects a sound example of sustainable forest management.

Advancing the cause? Contributions of criteria and indicators to sustainable forest management in Canada

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc2011-047 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 87 (04) ◽

pp. 488-493 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Peter Duinker

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Policy Development ◽

Forest Policy ◽

Forest Sector ◽

Full Potential ◽

Criteria And Indicators ◽

Wide Range ◽

Practical Experiences ◽

The aim of the paper is to take stock, based on my personal scholarly and practical experiences, of the progress made in Canada with criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management (C&I-SFM). Some developmental history is reviewed, and applications at national and local levels are summarized. In my opinion, Canada's work in developing and applying C&I-SFM has been beneficial, particularly in focussing forest-sector dialogues, in sensitizing people to the wide range of forest values, and in retrospective determinations of progress in SFM. Improvements over the next decade are needed in several areas: (a) improving data-collection programs; (b) linking C&I-SFM more directly into forest policy development; (c) shifting from retrospective to prospective sustainability analysis; and (d) applying C&I-SFM to non-industrial forests such as protected areas and urban forests. The C&I-SFM concept is sound. We have yet to tap its full potential in the pursuit of forest and forest-sector sustainability.

A social choice approach to sustainable forest management: an analysis of multiple forest values in Northwestern Ontario

Forest Policy and Economics ◽

10.1016/j.forpol.2004.03.005 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 6 (3-4) ◽

pp. 215-227 ◽

Cited By ~ 69

Author(s):

Shashi Kant ◽

Susan Lee

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Social Choice ◽

Northwestern Ontario ◽

Forest Values ◽

Choice Approach

Narrating disturbance : risk, power, and Mountain Pine Beetles

10.32469/10355/86506 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Elizabeth Waterbury Prentice

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Mountain Pine Beetle ◽

Economic Restructuring ◽

Natural World ◽

Mountain Pine ◽

Pine Beetle ◽

Management Policies ◽

Cultural Shifts ◽

The Way

Beginning in the mid 1990's, an outbreak of Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in northern Colorado affected over 3.4 million acres of primarily lodgepole pine forest. Mountain Pine Beetle are native to these forests, but the outbreak occurred at an unprecedented scope and scale, reflecting the legacy of forest management policies since the early days of European settlement and evoking new experiences and understandings of landscape in the resource-dependent region. Like much of the American West, this region is in the midst of a transition away from traditional extractive economies towards economies rooted in natural amenities and aesthetic landscape consumption. This transition is accompanied by demographic and cultural shifts, and has implications for the way that natural spaces are understood and ideas about what activities should orient people's relationships to the natural world. Across the disturbance affected area, three sites were selected to represent economic ideal types, ranging from high amenity resort destinations to small rural communities with strong roots in extraction. With data drawn from local newspapers, local and regional organizational publications, state and federal forest service documents and 26 interviews with subjects representing actor groups across the region, local narratives of environmental change were explored through the lens of green governmentality to understand how experiences of environmental change were contextualized by ongoing economic restructuring and cultural shifts. The meaning of the changing image of the landscape, the history of the timber industry in the state and competing narratives of industry decline, and the historic implications of forest management policies in disturbance-dependent forests are explored to shed light on the way that perceptions of landscape are anchored in complex social terrain and how nature can evoke new understandings of nature.

Making Forest Values Work: Enhancing Multi-Dimensional Perspectives towards Sustainable Forest Management

South-east European forestry ◽

10.15177/seefor.16-01 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Doni Blagojević ◽

Salvatore Martire ◽

Cary Yungmee Hendrickson ◽

Mihail Hanzu ◽

Michael Victor Galante ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Personal and group forest values and perceptions of groups' forest values in northwestern Ontario

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc82512-4 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 82 (4) ◽

pp. 512-520 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Susan Lee ◽

Shashi Kant

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Cognitive Mapping ◽

Aboriginal People ◽

Statistical Tests ◽

Management Planning ◽

Forest Management Planning ◽

Government Organizations ◽

Northwestern Ontario ◽

With the recent involvement of a greater diversity of groups working in forest management planning, the identification and understanding of people's forest values and their perceptions of one another's values may be a promising approach to sustainable forest management. This study identifies and analyzes the forest values and perceptions of the members of four groups, Aboriginal People, Environmental Non-Government Organizations (ENGOs), the forest industry, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), in northwestern Ontario. Conceptual Content Cognitive Mapping (3CM) was used to identify people's forest values and perceptions and dominant forest value themes were created using hierarchical clustering. Inter-group and intra-group similarities and differences among the rankings of participants' forest values and their perceptions were determined through various non-parametric statistical tests. Participants' perceptions about each group were generally similar, which included the two most prominent themes to be similar across all participants' perceptions of each group. Although the perceptions for a particular group were similar across the participant groups, they differed substantially with that participant group's personal ranking of the forest value themes. Key words: forest values, perceptions, stakeholders, cognitive mapping, sustainable forest management, collaborative decision-making

Economic perspectives and analyses of multiple forest values and sustainable forest management

Forest Policy and Economics ◽

10.1016/j.forpol.2005.11.003 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 9 (7) ◽

pp. 733-740 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shashi Kant

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Economic Perspectives ◽

25 Years of Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management: How Intergovernmental C&I Processes Have Made a Difference

Forests ◽

10.3390/f9090578 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (9) ◽

pp. 578 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Stefanie Linser ◽

Bernhard Wolfslehner ◽

Simon Bridge ◽

David Gritten ◽

Steven Johnson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Forest Management ◽

Sustainable Development Goals ◽

Management Practices ◽

Forest Degradation ◽

Criteria And Indicators ◽

The Earth ◽

History Of ◽

Development Goals ◽

Evidence Based Decision Making

Growing concern about forest degradation and loss, combined with the political impetus supplied by the Earth Summit in 1992, led to the establishment of eleven intergovernmental, regional, and international forest-related processes focused on the use of criteria and indicators (C&I) for sustainable forest management (SFM). Up to 171 countries have participated in these processes to apply C&I frameworks as a tool for data collection, monitoring, assessment, and reporting on SFM and on achieving various forest-related UN Sustainable Development Goals. Based on an expert survey and literature analysis we identify six interlinked impact domains of C&I efforts: (1) enhanced discourse and understanding of SFM; (2) shaped and focused engagement of science in SFM; (3) improved monitoring and reporting on SFM to facilitate transparency and evidence-based decision-making; (4) strengthened forest management practices; (5) facilitated assessment of progress towards SFM goals; and (6) improved forest-related dialog and communication. We conclude that the 25-year history of C&I work in forestry has had significant positive impacts, though challenges do remain for the implementation of C&I and progress towards SFM. The work should be continued and carried over to other sectors to advance sustainability goals more broadly.