Forest management, restoration, and designer ecosystems: Integrating strategies for a crowded planet

Abstract

As the global human population increases, the demand to conserve, restore, create, and sustainably manage ecosystems will increase as well. Forested ecosystems are of particular interest because of the biodiversity they support and their diverse values to people. Developments in conservation, restoration forestry, and in the study of designer ecosystems provide a diverse set of tools with which to pursue sustainable forestry goals. Nonetheless, we suggest that sustainable forestry can only be achieved by fully considering ecological, economic, and social needs in landscapes. This will require a clear realization of the trade-offs in site-specific management approaches and a multifaceted, landscape-scale perspective for evaluation of sustainability criteria. We propose collaborative creation of Sustainable Forestry Portfolios as a means to encourage the breadth of thinking required to guide sustainable forest management. We discuss 3 examples of Sustainable Forestry Portfolios with relevance to different settings in the future: 1) the Triad Approach, 2) Forest Landscape Restoration, and 3) Urban Forestry. In all settings, sustainable forestry is not solely a technical problem, but a challenge that must be met through a multidimensional perspective, interdisciplinary collaboration, and with active engagement of the people that live and work in the landscape.