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•Some subcategory protective forest % and number of reporting countries increased.•The increase in reporting signals growing awareness of forest functions or services.•Globally, mean ...% of protective forests has changed little over 25years.•A dual-peak distribution of protective forest suggests socio-economic influence.•Primary designation issues for multi-functions of forest remains a big challenge.
The world’s forests provide fundamental protection of soil and water resources as well as multiple ecosystem services and cultural or spiritual values. We summarized the FRA 2015 data for protective functions and ecosystem services, and analyzed increasing or decreasing trends of protective areas. The global forest area managed for protection of soil and water was 1.002billionha as of 2015, which was 25.1% of all global forested areas. Protective forests have increased by 0.181billionha over the past 25years mainly because more countries are now reporting protective forest areas (139 in 2015 vs 114 in 1990). However, average percentage of designated for protective forests did not change significantly from 1990 to 2015. Global forest area managed for ecosystem services is also now at 25.4% of global total forest area and has changed little over the past 25years. Among the twelve categories of protective forests, flood control, public recreation, and cultural services increased both in terms of percentage of total forest area and the number of reporting countries. Public awareness of the importance of forest resources for functions and services other than production continues to increase as evidenced by the increase of protective forest designations and reporting in many countries. Percentages of total forest area designated for both protective forests and ecosystem services show a dual-peak distribution of numbers of countries concentrated at 0% and 100%. This suggests a socio-economic influence for the designations. We examined five case study countries (Australia, Canada, China, Kenya, and Russia). The most dramatic changes in the past 25years have been in China where protective forests for soil and water resources increased from about 12% to 28% of forest area. The Russian Federation has also increased percentages of forest area devoted to soil and water resource protection and delivery of ecosystem services. Australia is now reporting in more protective forest categories whereas Kenya and Canada changed little. These five countries have their own classification of forest functions and recalculation methods of reporting for FRA 2015 were different. This demonstrates the difficulty in establishing a universal common designation scheme for multi-functions of forest. Production of more accurate assessments by further improvements in the reporting framework and data quality would help advance the value of FRA as the unique global database for forest functions integrated between forest ecosystems and social sciences.
Purpose of Review
Non-native tree species (NNT) raise a range of different associations and emotions—to many citizens they are just an exotic curiosity in parks, to many conservationists they are an ...evil to native ecosystems that should be eradicated, to a rising group of foresters they are part of the solution to climate change and an increasing timber demand, and to others they are already daily forestry business. In this review, where we also summarise the findings of the recent COST Action FP1403 (NNEXT) ‘Non-native tree species for European forests: experiences, risks and opportunities’, we highlight opportunities and challenges in the light of climate change, ecological risks and legislative limits of growing non-native tree species in Europe.
Recent Findings
Few NNT in Europe show invasive behaviour and are listed as prohibited species or as species to be monitored. A larger number of NNT is utilised in productive forestry and forest restoration due to their superior growth, valuable timber properties and good performance under harsh growing conditions. Current species distribution, experiences with success and failures and environmental concerns differ profoundly across Europe, with Western Europe overall revealing higher shares in NNT and showing a stronger interest of forestry related stakeholder groups to continue planting NNT.
Summary
Many more NNT are already used in forestry than previously thought, but relatively few species have major importance in terms of area, mainly in western European countries. Diversification, mixing and avoidance of invasion in relation to NNT are necessities that are relatively new on the agenda. In contrast, provenance research of major NNT has been going on for many decades and now provides important information for climate change adaptation. Despite the limitations to the use of NNT either through legal restrictions or forest certification that differ considerably across Europe, the careful integration of a range of tested NNT also into future forest management planning shows a high potential for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Masculinities in Forests: Representations of Diversity demonstrates the wide variability in ideas about, and practice of, masculinity in different forests, and how these relate to forest management. ...While forestry is widely considered a masculine domain, a significant portion of the literature on gender and development focuses on the role of women, not men. This book addresses this gap and also highlights how there are significant, demonstrable differences in masculinities from forest to forest. The book develops a simple conceptual framework for considering masculinities, one which both acknowledges the stability or enduring quality of masculinities, but also the significant masculinity-related options available to individual men within any given culture. The author draws on her own experiences, building on her long-term experience working globally in the conservation and development worlds, also observing masculinities among such professionals. The core of the book examines masculinities, based on long-term ethnographic research in the rural Pacific Northwest of the US; Long Segar, East Kalimantan; and Sitiung, West Sumatra, both in Indonesia. The author concludes by pulling together the various strands of masculine identities and discussing the implications of these various versions of masculinity for forest management. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of forestry, gender studies and conservation and development, as well as practitioners and NGOs working in these fields.
Objective To analyze the effect of 20 years'practice of close-to-nature forest management, and summarize the experiences of implementing close-to-nature forest management in Germany.Method Based on ...the data of two forest inventories (interval of 10 years), this paper emphatically analyzes the effect of 20 years'close-to-nature forest management practice in Germany.Result The area of coniferous forests, such as Picea abies and Pinus sylvestris, has been significantly reducing in the past 20 years under close-to-nature forest management, while that of broadleaved forests and coniferous mixed forests continues to increase. All broadleaf species shows an volume increase of about 15 m3·hm-2 in average, and all conifer species combined also shows a positive change of additional 4 m3·hm-2, whereas Picea abies is the only species with a decline in volume of 5 m3·hm-2. Most strikingly is the decrease in area of artificial forests and the increase in the classes close-to-nature and even pristine.Conclusion Achi
In this introduction to the Special Issue, we set out the key definitions, theoretical concepts and analytical dimensions of integrated forest governance. By so doing, we identify and account for the ...interplay between forest policy integration and integrated forest management as two constituting elements of integrated forest governance. Second, we summarize the main findings reported in the regular papers, and link them to the outlined definitions, theoretical concepts and analytical dimensions. This introduction further takes stock and classifies the main paradoxes of, barriers to, and drivers of forest policy integration and integrated forest management. It then structures the main empirical findings and conclusions along the key analytical dimensions and links them to the state of the art knowledge. Finally, we draw policy relevant conclusions and outline suggestions for future research.
•Global forest area fell by 3% from 1990 (4128Mha) to 2015 (3999Mha).•The rate of net forest loss between 2010 and 2015 was half that in the 1990s.•Net forest loss was mainly in the tropics; ...temperate forest area has increased.•Rates of forest loss are highest in low income countries.
The area of land covered by forest and trees is an important indicator of environmental condition. This study presents and analyses results from the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 (FRA 2015) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FRA 2015 was based on responses to surveys by individual countries using a common reporting framework, agreed definitions and reporting standards. Results indicated that total forest area declined by 3%, from 4128Mha in 1990 to 3999Mha in 2015. The annual rate of net forest loss halved from 7.3Mhay−1 in the 1990s to 3.3Mhay−1 between 2010 and 2015. Natural forest area declined from 3961Mha to 3721Mha between 1990 and 2015, while planted forest (including rubber plantations) increased from 168Mha to 278Mha. From 2010 to 2015, tropical forest area declined at a rate of 5.5Mhay−1 – only 58% of the rate in the 1990s – while temperate forest area expanded at a rate of 2.2Mhay−1. Boreal and sub-tropical forest areas showed little net change. Forest area expanded in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, East Asia, and Western-Central Asia, but declined in Central America, South America, South and Southeast Asia and all three regions in Africa. Analysis indicates that, between 1990 and 2015, 13 tropical countries may have either passed through their forest transitions from net forest loss to net forest expansion, or continued along the path of forest expansion that follows these transitions. Comparing FRA 2015 statistics with the findings of global and pan-tropical remote-sensing forest area surveys was challenging, due to differences in assessment periods, the definitions of forest and remote sensing methods. More investment in national and global forest monitoring is needed to provide better support for international initiatives to increase sustainable forest management and reduce forest loss, particularly in tropical countries.
In the real world there are systems which are composed of independent production units. The conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) model uses the sum of the respective inputs and outputs of all ...component units of a system to calculate its efficiency. This paper develops a parallel DEA model which takes the operation of individual components into account in calculating the efficiency of the system. A property owned by this parallel model is that the inefficiency slack of the system can be decomposed into the inefficiency slacks of its component units. This helps the decision maker identify inefficient components and make subsequent improvements. Another property is that the efficiency calculated from this model is smaller than that calculated from the conventional DEA model. Few systems will have perfect efficiency score; consequently, a stronger discrimination power is gained. In addition to theoretical derivations, a case of the national forests of Taiwan is used as an example to illustrate the whole idea.
With 20% of the world’s forests, Russia has global potential in bioeconomy development, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. However, unsustainable forest management based on ...‘wood mining’ reduces this potential. Based on document analysis, participant observations and interviews, this article shows how non-state actors—environmental NGOs and forest companies—address forest resource depletion and primary forest loss in Russia. We analyse two key interrelated forest discourses driven by non-state actors in Russia: (1) intensive forest management in secondary forests as a pathway towards sustained yield and primary forest conservation; (2) intact forest landscapes as a priority in primary forest conservation. We illustrate how these discourses have been integrated into policy debates, institutions and practices and discuss their relation to relevant global discourses. The article concludes that despite successful cases in conserving intact forest landscapes, there is still a frontier between sustainable forest management discourses and forestry practice in Russia.
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