Management of virgin beech forests in Serbia and the dynamics of changes in their basic structural elements

We studied the size-density trajectories of pure even-aged unthinned beech stands in the ranges of 625–40,000 trees per hectare initial densities and of 12–33 years of age. A new piecewise polynomial function family was fitted to the trajectories, giving way to various applications. Initial number of stems per hectare (N 0) and mean girth at breast height at the onset of mortality (Cg 0) were parameters of the trajectory model, in addition to the parameters of the maximum size-density line. The two former parameters were tied by a linear relationship, which allowed the prediction of trajectories not considered in this study. Furthermore, the generic trajectory equation fitted the trajectories of thinned stands not used in the estimation of the parameters. This paper models the size-density trajectories of pure even-aged beech stands, including the early development stage, which is not as well documented as are the later stages. The work reported in this paper concerns the development of a novel approach to size-density trajectories, considered as a mortality model to provide references to managers of beech forests. A 33-year-old beech spacing trial beginning at 12 years of age provided the opportunity to study the size-density trajectories of unthinned stands of this species. The beech data helped us to develop a new piecewise function to model these trajectories. The model we chose was a polynomial segment smoothly joining two linear functions. The fits of this model allowed us to estimate the parameters of the size-density trajectories of all stands, which were the quadratic mean girths at mortality onset and at maximum density. A linear relationship between these characteristics allowed us to reduce the number of parameters needed to fit the trajectories and made it possible to predict a stand trajectory from any initial density not observed in the experimental stands. A single-parameter function family could be used to fit the size-density trajectories of beech stands. The predicted trajectories have various applications in beech silviculture and growth simulators.

Throughout the 1990s, forest planning and management in the southwest Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea underwent a period of unprecedented reform. More than decade into this process, however, the worst aspects of the country's forest industry continue unabated. Reflecting on these events, this paper presents a detailed historical analysis of state intervention in forest planning and management. The paper argues that beneath a broader history of dramatic change, forest planning and management continues to sustain relationships, attitudes and an approach to forest management that have remained unchanged and unchallenged since the imposition of the first colonial regimes in the mid-1880s. Drawing insight from the field of political ecology, the paper identifies five key factors that are thought to perpetuate this situation, arguing that the failure of the most recent reforms can be attributed to the state's repeated failure to address the effect of these political-ecological relationships on the entire forest planning and management enterprise. The paper concludes with a brief commentary on the practical implications of this political-ecological perspective for the future development of forest planning and management in Papua New Guinea.

The objective of research was to verify, whether succesion of nudal beech forests affects energy, ash and Ct contents of top layers of cambisols and aboveground part of dominant herb species Dryopteris filix-mas. The forest stands, from the juvenile stemwood to the stand of primeval forest character, were located in Slovenské stredohorie Mts (Western Carpathians). It has been found out that the successional stages of beech stands significantly affected soil characteristics of the ecotope, in the case of Dryopteris filix-mas species significant difference was observed only for the energy content. Approximately 7.5% less energy was accumulated in humus subhorizons Oof of mature beech stands (110, 200 years) compared with the juvenile stemwoods. On the other hand, in Aoq horizons markedly more energy (by 35–66%) was accumulated in the soils of mature beech phytocoenoses. The influence of stand succession differentiated ash content in Aoq horizons too. Significant difference (7.6%) was found between 85 and 200-year-old beech stand. Within studied parameters only accumulation of Ct in top soil layers was not significantly affected by stand succession. The relation between energy and ash accumulation in top soil layers of studied beech stands showed significant correlations between the variables (P <0.01). Approximately 62% of energy variability in humus subhorizons Ool of the studied stands was affected by the ash content (lower was the ash content — higher was the energy content). In Aoq soil horizons this dependence was 50% (higher was the ash content — lower was the energy content).

Millar Western Forest Products Ltd. completed its 2007–2016 detailed forest management plan for its forest management agreement area by engaging multi-discipline expertise to better manage forest values. Disciplines were formed into impact assessment groups, which were charged with developing indicators and targets for identified values and objectives and with constructing models to predict the impacts of forest management activities. Three different modeling approaches were used in developing the plan and the best results were obtained by integrating indicators directly into the forecasting model even when the indicators were simple versions of complex models. Integrating indicators into the forecasting model reduced the penalty cost on other indicators, permitted the model to find better solutions, provided almost immediate feedback to the plan development team, permitted more scenarios to be investigated, and provided a better understanding of the dynamics and tradeoffs. The other two techniques used in the DFMP involved the assessment of forecasted scenarios with more complex discipline specific models, which provided more detailed information about the indicators. Key words: forecasting, forest management planning, Patchworks, forest management modeling, timber supply analysis, trade-off analysis, VOIT

The proliferation of community-based collaborative approaches to public land management and planning has spawned many questions regarding issues of community representation and the effects of participation for local residents. This paper presents a longitudinal assessment of local resident participation in collaborative forest planning on local community–forest relations in southwestern Colorado. Using survey data of participants involved in the San Juan National Forest's forest plan revision community study groups from 1998 to 2003, we assess participation in terms of community representation and the effects of community-based collaboration upon individuals' forest uses, forest values, and the level and form of involvement in forest management and planning activities. Results show that community representation remains slanted towards existing active stakeholders, and that while forest values, uses, and frequencies of involvement change little, participants cite positive effects in terms of the development of new knowledge, personal relationships, and greater confidence to engage in forest management affairs.

The instrument of forest planning is regarded as the bedrock of multifunctional forest management, serving as the nexus between forest management concepts and practice. Despite this pivotal function, its linkage to day-to-day forest management has rarely been studied. This case study employs the theory-methods package of practice theory and a variety of qualitative data from public forest management in southwestern Germany to explore the processes through which complex management objectives are substantiated and broken down to the stand level in the forest planning procedure. Additionally, it examines the role that the resulting medium-term management plans and professional relationships play in everyday forest management. First, the formal principles of forest planning and their manifestation in administrative structures are described. This rationalistic conceptualization is then considered in contrast to specific planning fieldwork and everyday forest management situations, which are much more reactively structured and shaped by local situated knowledge as a collaborative and collective practice. The analysis shows that forest management plans only partially function as the intended action-guiding instrument, and even fulfill alternative functions, while being most important for communicative and administrative purposes. Furthermore, the planning process often reveals the non-implementation of the management objectives. The observed responses to this discrepancy can only be understood by acknowledging underlying contextual and relational factors, such as the professionals' organizational positionality and the dynamic socio-material nature of the forest. The intrinsic relational nature of forest management and planning manifests itself in the form of actively cultivated professional social relationships and foresters acting as creative situational adaption artists. • Forest planning and implementation are studied from a practice perspective. • The objectives defined in management plans are often not implemented. • The plans mostly do not function as action-guiding instruments. • The rationalistic management conceptualization contrasts with its reactive practice. • Situated knowledge and relationship work are essential in forest management.

Aim: Since forest planning is characterized by long time horizon and it typically involves large areas of land and numerous stakeholders, uncertainty and risk should play an important role when developing forest management plans. The aim of this study is to review different methods to deal with risk and uncertainty in forest planning, listing problems that forest managers may face during the preparation of management plans and trying to give recommendations in regard to the application of each method according to the problem case. The inclusion of risk and uncertainty in decision support systems is also analyzed.Area: It covers the temporal and spatial scale of forest planning, the spatial context, the participation process, the objectives dimensions and the good and services addressed.Material and methods: Several hundreds of articles dealing with uncertainty and risk were identified regarding different forestry-related topics and approaches. Form them, around 170 articles were further reviewed, categorized and evaluated.Main results: The study presents a thorough review and classification of methods and approaches to consider risk and uncertainty in forest planning. Moreover, new approaches are introduced, showing the opportunities that their application present in forest planning.Research highlights: The study can aid forest managers in the decision making process when designing a forest management plan considering risk and uncertainty.Keywords: operations research; optimal alternative; stochastic risk; endogenous risk; stand level; forest level.

Sustainable forest management is important for advancing sustainable societal development. Effective communication plays a major role in how goals and objectives are achieved. This study aims to assess how sustainability is considered by people who develop forest management plans (or forest plans in short). We employed the snowball sample technique to locate the study’s respondents. In addition, an open-ended questionnaire and a mix method data collection (phone and email) and analysis (qualitative and quantitative) were found to be adequate methods to survey forest planners who have been involved in the development, implementation, evaluation, and/or revision of forest plans in the United States. Our approach helped us to understand their perceptions of and means of incorporating sustainability concerns in forest plans. A total of 55 surveys were completed by forest planners physically located in 26 of the 50 states in the country. Results suggested that planners generally placed environmental sustainability concerns over social and economic sustainability concerns. A variety of key terms were central to forest planners’ attempts to communicate sustainability, from which most were associated with philosophical and temporal principles that would then be associated with concrete actions and the human dimension. Nevertheless, respondents also acknowledged difficulties and misunderstandings in describing how forest sustainability should be demonstrated within a forest plan. Topics such as restoration, carbon sequestration, and resilience were infrequently associated with sustainability and sustainable forest management. Finally, we found that the respondents were divided on whether the language used in forest plans to demonstrate sustainability could be improved.

Beech (Fagus spp.) is one of the most common tree species in Europe and Western Asia. The implementation of sustainable forest Operations (SFOs) in beech forests is therefore crucial in terms of sustainable forest management. This review summarises the state of the art concerning time-motion studies carried out in beech forests, defining the work productivity and the related costs of different harvesting systems applied in these stands. The main focus in recent years on felling and processing operations has been the introduction of fully mechanised systems in beech forests, obtaining satisfactory results in terms of work productivity. However, the working performance is still lower than in coniferous stands. Skidding and forwarding resulted in suitable techniques for ground-based extraction, both showing a clear inclination towards increasing working performance when applying higher levels of mechanisation. Aerial extraction by cable yarders is particularly important in beech forests, considering that these are often located in steep terrains. Further efforts should be dedicated to enhancing the training for operators to extend the application of aerial extraction systems, which ensures good levels of work productivity and limited soil disturbances. In summary, this review aimed to give a clear insight into forest operations in beech forests which could be useful for forest managers, forest engineers and researchers in the sector of sustainable forest operations.

There are growing societal expectations that forests are managed for multiple benefits including carbon storage, biodiversity, health and recreation. Consequently, forest managers are increasingly expected to consider how external factors, including climate change, affect the future of their forests and the wider public benefits they provide. But traditional silvicultural methods providing production forecasts based on mensuration surveys and site conditions—supplemented with expert knowledge—do not provide insights into non‐timber ecosystem services and the unprecedented potential future changes are too complex to comprehend based on experience alone. Scenario planning, supported by ecosystem services modelling, helps to assess the future and its uncertainties in an organised way, through structured processes that push decision‐makers and planners beyond the axioms and norms of conventional wisdom. However, despite advances in modelling and mapping forest ecosystem services, they are rarely developed to be used operationally in forest planning. To learn how ecosystem services scenarios could inform forest planning, researchers and a forest manager in Scotland collaborated over a 6‐year period, co‐producing and interpreting scenarios over 17 meetings and 38 h of engagement. We distilled seven lessons that summarise how ecosystem services scenarios can assist forest planners in their tree species and management choices by improving understanding of the trade‐offs and identifying opportunities to increase both timber and non‐timber benefits. Developing useful and usable ecosystem services scenarios for forest managers requires co‐production, where transdisciplinary collaboration, an aspiration for knowledge democracy and boundary management between researchers and foresters lead to new forms of knowledge that support forest planning. With adequate resourcing and commitment, ecosystem services scenarios can raise understanding and improve forest planning for an uncertain future. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

A property rights-based approach is proposed in the paper to underline the common characteristics of the forest property rights specification in ten ECE countries, the specific patterns governing the harvesting of timber in private forestry and the role of the forest management planning in determining the content of the property rights. The analysis deals with the private forests of the individuals (non industrial ownership) from ten countries, covering 7.3 million ha and producing yearly some 25 million m3 timber. The study shows that the forest management rights in private forests belong to the State and that the withdrawal rights on timber, yet recognised in the forest management plans, are in reality strongly restricted from an economic viewpoint. The forest management planning is the key instrument of the current forest governance system, based on top-down, hierarchically imposed and enforced set of compulsory rules on timber harvesting. With few exceptions, the forest ownersÂ’ have little influence in the forest planning and harvesting. The rational and State-lead approach of the private forest management has serious implications not only on the economic content of the property rights, but also on the learning and adaptive capacity of private forestry to cope with current challenges such the climate change, the increased industry needs for wood as raw material, or the marketing of innovative non wood forest products and services. The study highlights that understanding and comparing the regime of the forest ownership require a special analysis of the economic rights attached to each forest attribute; and that the evolution towards more participatory decision-making in the local forest governance can not be accurately assessed in ECE region without a proper understanding of the forest management planning process.Â

To quantify and map woody biomass (WB) and forest carbon (C) stocks, several models were developed. They differ in terms of scale of application, details related to the input data required and outputs provided. Local Authorities, such as Mountain Communities, can be supported in sustainable forest planning and management by providing specific models in which the reference unit is the same as the one reported in the Forest Management Plans (FMP), i.e. the forest stand. In the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy), a few studies were performed to assess WB and forest C stocks, and they were generally based on data coming from regional—or national—forest inventories and remote sensing, without taking into account data collected in the FMPs. For this study, the first version of the stand-level model “WOody biomass and Carbon ASsessment” (WOCAS) for WB and C stocks calculation was improved into a second version (WOCAS v2) and preliminary results about its first application to 2019 forest stands of Valle Camonica District (Lombardy Region) are presented. Since the model WOCAS uses the growing stock as the main driver for the calculation, it can be applied in any other forest area where the same input data are available.

Classification of tree species or species classes is still a challenge for remote sensing-based forest inventory. Operational use of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data for prediction of forest variables has this far been dominated by area-based methods where laser scanning data have been used for estimation of forest variables within raster cells. Classification of tree species has however not been achieved with sufficient accuracy with area-based methods using only ALS data. Furthermore, analysis of tree species at the level of raster cells with typical size of 15 m × 15 m is not ideal in the case of mixed species stands. Most ALS systems for terrestrial mapping use only one wavelength of light. New multispectral ALS systems for terrestrial mapping have recently become operational, such as the Optech Titan system with wavelengths 1550 nm, 1064 nm, and 532 nm. This study presents an alternative type of area-based method for classification of tree species classes where multispectral ALS data are used in combination with small raster cells. In this “mini raster cell method” features for classification are derived from the intensity of the different wavelengths in small raster cells using a moving window average approach to allow for a heterogeneous tree species composition. The most common tree species in the Nordic countries are Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies, constituting about 80% of the growing stock volume. The remaining 20% consists of several deciduous species, mainly Betula pendula and Betula pubescens, and often grow in mixed forest stands. Classification was done for pine (Pinus sylvestris), spruce (Picea abies), deciduous species and mixed species in middle-aged and mature stands in a study area located in hemi-boreal forest in the southwest of Sweden (N 58°27’, E 13°39’). The results were validated at plot level with the tree species composition defined as proportion of basal area of the tree species classes. The mini raster cell classification method was slightly more accurate (75% overall accuracy) than classification with a plot level area-based method (68% overall accuracy). The explanation is most likely that the mini raster cell method is successful at classifying homogenous patches of tree species classes within a field plot, while classification based on plot level analysis requires one or several heterogeneous classes of mixed species forest. The mini raster cell method also results in a high-resolution tree species map. The small raster cells can be aggregated to estimate tree species composition for arbitrary areas, for example forest stands or area units corresponding to field plots.

Facing an uncertain future, european forests are expected to fulfill a range of forest ecosystem services (FES), including timber supply, carbon storage or biodiversity. Using criteria and indicators forest managers can evaluate alternative management options and decision support systems (DSS) help them make decisions considering multiple objectives. Such tools need input on forest development under various scenarios, to obtain robust decisions, such as provided by forest models. We use the simulation results from the project “OptFor-EU” generated by the hybrid forest model PICUS v1.5 for four case study areas in Austria, Italy, Germany and Romania. We utilize six different climate input (3 RCPs, 2 regional climate models) and up to nine management alternatives in simulations until year 2100. The initial stand structure was derived using forest inventory data. We aggregated forest stands (represented by forest types) assuming even distribution of age classes in a hypothetical landscape or region of interest.We found positive tradeoffs between key forest ecosystem services, FES (carbon sink, biodiversity, harvested wood volume) for selected forest management alternatives. Under a “no active management” scenario, most of the simulated forest stands in the case study areas reached their potential carbon storage in the second half of the century and thus their carbon sink becomes neutral during that period. A surprising result was that selected biodiversity indicators were higher under management scenarios than no management, at least for certain time periods and age classes. Less extensive forest management alternatives may offer tradeoffs between FESs. Next steps are expanding the simulations to additional case study areas and refining and optimizing the forest management, considering more realistic age class distributions and/or varying management by age class. ReferencesIrauschek, W. Rammer, M.J. Lexer, Evaluating multifunctionality and adaptive capacity of mountain forest management alternatives under climate change in the Eastern Alps, Eur. J. For. Res. 136 (2017) 1051–1069. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-017-1051-6.Lexer, M. J. and K. Hönninger. 2001. A modified 3D-patch model for spatially explicit simulation of vegetation composition in heterogeneous landscapes. Forest Ecology and Management 144:43–65.

Balancing societal demands on forests is a major challenge in current forest management. Small‐scale private forest owners are an important ownership group that is rarely addressed directly in this discussion. Our study aims to identify and differentiate between private forest owner groups. Based on this, we take a systemic approach and determine leverage points that can be used to foster transformative change towards integrative conservation‐oriented forest management. We conducted a survey of 1656 small‐scale private forest owners in northwest Germany within a typical European multi‐ownership landscape and formed three clusters based on their activities. While all groups generally perceived nature conservation as important, they differed with regard to their forest management activities. Multiple‐use‐oriented forest owners (45%) were most active, including in terms of conservation measures. Conservation‐oriented owners (25%) mainly focused on passive measures, and conventional owners (30%) showed only a little engagement with conservation‐related activities. Despite the differences, common instruments promoting conservation activities were identified. They included, for example on‐site consultation, information about legal regulations and financial incentives. Based on four system characteristics (parameters, feedback, design and intent), we identified leverage points towards transformative change. The deep and thus effective leverage points are changing the discourse, accounting for the heterogeneity of private forest owners as well as for uncertainty related to climate change and adapting measures to local contexts. Furthermore, working towards increasing awareness, knowledge and interest as well as accounting for the desire for autonomy and control are promising pathways for change. A holistic transformation of forest policy and management towards integrative conservation is urgently needed to meet the current challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and timber demand. This transformation has to go beyond the adaptation of existing policy instruments and instead focus on systematic and cross‐sectoral changes in the underlying policy orientation, its design and its implementation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.