Abstract
Both in Germany and in China, there is strong expertise regarding the different aspects of forest management, as well as forest products management. Nevertheless, forestry in both countries is facing challenges, some of which are regional, but many of which are shared. Therefore, experts from both countries (Technical University of Munich Germany; Northwest A&F University Yangling, China; Forestry Academy of Shaanxi, China; Thünen Institut, Germany; FEDRC GIZ Forest Policy Facility (Forestry Economics Development and Research Center of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), Germany; and Center for Natural Forest Protection in Shaanxi, China) met to share their knowledge and deduce recommendations for future multifunctional forest management for the temperate zone. The workshop, held at the Northwest A&F University in September 2018, included presentations and intensive discussions, as well as a field tour. The results of the workshop that are summarized in this white paper are meant to provide an overview of the multi-faceted nature of the topic for interested scientists and forest practitioners, describe tools that can be used to analyze various aspects of multifunctionality and, in an exemplary fashion, highlight gathered experience from long- and short-term experiments. Included are social demands, economic goals, and scientific baselines. The topics reach from economic evaluations of forest ecosystem services over forest management practices, including afforestation, restoration, and preparations to face climate change, to wood/forest products utilization and participation of local people for poverty reduction. Overall, an optimistic picture emerges, showing that by using adapted forest management practices, which try to embrace the concept of multifunctionality, various use schemes and demands can be integrated at single sites, allowing us to achieve both environmental protection and productive forests, including societal demands, as well as aspects of tradition and national identity.
Highlights
After the end of the last ice age, only ~8000 years ago, around 62 million km2 (41.6%) of the world’s mainland was covered by forests
Distance-independent indices are preferable for practice, since they are less demanding in data collection and easy to calculate
Response to competition from each prediction goal may be different. This led to the following question: Does the same competition index perform well for different components? Or should different competition indices be used for different prediction goals?
Summary
After the end of the last ice age, only ~8000 years ago, around 62 million km (41.6%) of the world’s mainland was covered by forests. The distinction between goals of society or special societal actors, natural processes, ecosystem functions, and services is better synthesized in the “ecosystem services” concept [6]. The cultural services cannot be understood only by the help of analyzing ecosystem elements or processes, but by understanding the meaning which is attributed to objects by society These objects can be called ecosystems, nature, landscape, wilderness etc. The most important “tasks” or “functions” of forests for society are to produce and/or offer high quality timber, firewood, non-timber forest products, fiber, groundwater, potable water, clean air, and buffering capacities for matter and energy, such as noise, landscape structuring (e.g., counteracting erosion), water (floods vs drought), carbon (sequestration to counteract climate change), offering habitats for both humans (recreation) as well as wildlife (protecting biodiversity) and offering jobs and income. Sustainable use, is a principle introduced by humans to prevent such a collapse of the human population
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