Many indicators and criteria have been proposed to assess the sustainable management of
forests but their scientific validity remains uncertain. Because the effects of forest disturbances
(such as logging) are often specific to particular species, sites, landscapes, regions
and forest types, management ‘‘shortcuts’’ such as indicator species, focal species and...
In many regions of the world, forest management has shifted from practices emphasizing timber production to more sustainable harvesting that integrates ecological values, including maintenance of biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and ecological goods and services. To this end, management strategies emphasize retention of stand structures that meet the needs of forest-obligate...
Recent evidence suggests that population declines of some avian species may be driven primarily by reduced quantity and diversity of early-successional habitat on the breeding grounds. Increasing intensity of forest management on private lands and decreased harvest rates on federal lands has resulted in a loss of the diverse early-successional...
Land-use change around protected areas limits their ability to conserve biodiversity by altering ecological processes such as natural hydrologic and disturbance regimes, facilitating species invasions, and interfering with dispersal of organisms. This paper informs USA National Wildlife Refuge System conservation planning by predicting future land-use change on lands within 25...
Post-fire forest management commonly requires accepting some negative ecological impacts from management activities in order to achieve management objectives. Managers need to know, however, whether ecological impacts from post-fire management activities are transient or cause long-term ecosystem degradation. We studied the long-term response of understory vegetation to two post-fire logging...
Many land managers in the Pacific Northwest have the goal of increasing late-successional forest structures. Despite the documented importance of Douglas-fir tree bark structure in forested ecosystems, little is known about factors influencing bark development and how foresters can manage development. This study investigated the relative importance of tree size,...
Over one third of the earth’s land surface has been modified to some extent for agricultural purposes. The large global footprint of agriculture, combined with the knowledge that existing reserve networks are likely insufficient for long-term conservation of native biodiversity, has necessitated that agricultural systems contribute to conservation of native...
Although science is widely accepted as a fundamental source of information underlying decisions about forest management and conservation, considerably less attention has been paid to the inevitable role that normative values and beliefs play in such decisions. This thesis highlights the normative dimensions of "ecological forestry," a strategy of forest...
Most administrators and ecologists agree that reducing the levels of hazardous fuels on forests is essential to restore healthy
watersheds and protect adjacent human communities. The current debate over the appropriateness, technique, and timing of treatments
utilized to restore vegetation structure and composition is currently on-going at local, state, and...
Understanding the drivers and implications of anthropogenic disturbance of ecological connectivity is a key concern for the conservation of biodiversity and 50 ecosystem processes. Here, we review human activities that affect the movements and dispersal of aquatic organisms, including damming of rivers, river regulation, habitat loss and alteration, human-assisted dispersal...
Full Text:
and conservation initiatives will be most effective (Pringle 2001;
Lindenmayer et al. 2008). 75