1: Excellent treatment of subject with surprisingly wide applicability
For at least two thousand years, forests have been managed in some fashion to maintain productive harvest for fuels, building materials, paper and other products. Started as a local part of the economy, forest management has morphed into a intensive cropping system that places millions of hectares across the world into production each year. The goal of the system is maximal return on investment, with a view that this is best accomplished with factory methods.
The result is that a tunnel-vision view of trees as simply industrial product has blotted out the importance of ecosystem functions of natural forests. Natural forests are replaced by evenly grown, homogeneous blocks of trees with limited diversity. Not only is the composition of the natural forest profoundly changed at the level of the tree species, the rich community of the natural forest is destroyed. The loss of biodiversity has profound implications for the planet as a whole.
The authors do an extraordinary job building multiple contexts in a few very readable chapters. The chapters are well organized. Complex issues presented in ways that make them very understandable. Jargon is minimal and, where needed, clearly defined.
The book traces the evolution of silviculture through history from ad hoc methods to formalized modern methods (the modern methods are presented as including science, but the system is taken to task for being more learned-based than thought-based).
Silviculture gives way to a discussion on theoretical ecology. The discussion is a tight and excellent review the science of ecology and its evolution from Darwin to present thoughts on the dynamics of ecosystems and the organisms they contain.
The two major threads of silviculture and ecology are woven together, culminating in the final chapter on managing industrial forests as complex adaptive systems rather than factory floors.
The size of land covered by industrial tree farming is huge and growing each year. Modifying the goals of the industrial forest has great potential for creating forests that yield both industrial wood product and rich ecosystems. This book transcends the niche of silviculture and has broad importance. It is also an excellent read.
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