Advanced Research on Continuous Cover Forestry/Uneven-Aged Forestry

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 July 2021) | Viewed by 3613

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Box 49, 230 53 Alnarp, Sweden
Interests: forest management; continuous cover forestry; forest disturbances; forest biodiversity; carbon dynamics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forests provide a vital renewable resource and a wide range of other ecosystem services that are influenced by forest management. Different forest management methods can be used to meet forest owners and societal needs. Continuous cover forestry (CCF) or uneven-aged forestry is a forest management system that by selective harvesting of single trees or groups of trees always maintains structurally diverse stands with trees of various sizes. There is a growing interest in this management method in areas where currently even-aged forests managed using clearcutting dominate, for example, in Fennoscandia and the Baltic States.

The two management systems are inherently different, no clearcutting takes place in CCF, and increased use of CCF is advocated by various stakeholder groups. Importantly, the use of CCF is seen as potentially beneficial to forest biodiversity, which is in decline regionally and globally. Additionally, CCF could provide a viable forest management option under changing climatic conditions and increasing natural disturbance pressure. Since CCF has been practised very little in clearcut dominated regions, its effects on various ecosystem services are largely unclear, especially regarding whether CCF could provide competitive economic returns and if it will benefit biodiversity. Studies from other regions show varying results and highlight the importance of landscape context and forest history.

For this Special Issue, we invite papers dealing with any aspect of the practice and effects of CCF. For example, topics can include the study of different selective harvesting methods, their effects on stand growth, economic viability, biodiversity, aesthetics, disturbance resistance, and disease resistance.

Dr. Meelis Seedre
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • uneven-aged forestry
  • forest biodiversity
  • disturbance mimicking
  • moderate severity disturbance
  • boreal forest
  • ecosystem services
  • sustainable forest management
  • partial harvest
  • production forest

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

19 pages, 4031 KiB  
Article
Optimizing Forest Spatial Structure with Neighborhood-Based Indices: Four Case Studies from Northeast China
by Lingbo Dong, Hongyang Wei and Zhaogang Liu
Forests 2020, 11(4), 413; https://doi.org/10.3390/f11040413 - 7 Apr 2020
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3124
Abstract
The fine-scale spatial patterns of trees and their interactions are of paramount importance for controlling the structure and function of forest ecosystems; however, few management techniques can be employed to adjust the structural characteristics of uneven-aged mixed forests. This research provides an accurate, [...] Read more.
The fine-scale spatial patterns of trees and their interactions are of paramount importance for controlling the structure and function of forest ecosystems; however, few management techniques can be employed to adjust the structural characteristics of uneven-aged mixed forests. This research provides an accurate, efficient, and impersonal comprehensive thinning index (P-index) for selecting candidate harvesting trees; the index was proposed by weighting the commonly used quantitative indices with respect to stand fine-scale structures, competition status, tree vigor, and tree stability. The applications of the proposed P-index in evaluating and simulating the process of thinning operations were examined using four 1-ha mapped plots with different forest types, namely, natural secondary forest, natural pine-broadleaved mixed forest, natural larch-birch mixed forest, and natural oak forest, which were widely distributed across the Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. The results indicated that the proposed P-index could effectively affect the structural differentiations between different forest types and alternative thinning intensities. The marginal benefits of alternative thinning intensities on the integrated forest structure indicated that removing 10% of the trees from the plots might be the optimal thinning intensity from the perspective of optimizing stand structure, in which the P-index values could be increased by approximately 5%–11% for the four tested plots. The main conclusion from this paper was that the proposed P-index could be used as a quantitative tool to manage uneven-aged mixed forests. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Research on Continuous Cover Forestry/Uneven-Aged Forestry)
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