Human impacts on Earth's ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affectin...Human impacts on Earth's ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affecting the resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide and the provision of important ecosystem services. This Anthropocene era is forcing us to reconsider past and current forest management and silvicultural practices, and search for new ones that are more flexible and better at dealing with the increasing uncertainty brought about by these accelerating and cumulative global changes. Here, we briefly review the focus and limitations of past and current forest management and silvicultural practices mainly as developed in Europe and North America. We then discuss some recent promising concepts, such as managing forests as complex adaptive systems, and approaches based on resilience, functional diversity, assisted migration and multi-species plantations, to propose a novel approach to integrate the functionality of species-traits into a functional complex network approach as a flexible and multi-scale way to manage forests for the Anthropocene. This approach takes into consideration the high level of uncertainty associated with future environmental and societal changes. It relies on the quantification and dynamic monitoring of functional diversity and complex network indices to manage forests as a functional complex network. Using this novel approach, the most efficient forest management and silvicultural practices can be determined, as well as where, at what scale, and at what intensity landscape-scale resistance, resilience and adaptive capacity of forests to global changes can be improved.展开更多
Unlike fire or insect outbreaks, for which a suppression program can be implemented, it is impossible to prevent a windstorm event or stop it while it is occurring. Reducing stand susceptibility to windstorms requires...Unlike fire or insect outbreaks, for which a suppression program can be implemented, it is impossible to prevent a windstorm event or stop it while it is occurring. Reducing stand susceptibility to windstorms requires a good understanding of the factors affecting this susceptibility. Distinct species- and size-related differences in stem windthrow susceptibility are difficult to obtain because it is impossible to distinguish their relative effects from those of wind intensity. Using a damage assessment database (60 20-metre radius plots) acquired after an exceptional wind storm in Western Quebec in 2007, we developed an approach in which proportions of windthrown sugar maple poles were used as bio-indicators of wind intensities affecting the plots. We distinguished between single and interactive effects of wind intensity, species, stem size, and local basal area on stem windthrow susceptibility. The best logistic regression model predicting stem windthrow included the wind intensity bio-indicator, species, basal area, and the species by diameter at breast height (DBH, 1.3 m) interaction. Stem windthrow probability generally increased with DBH and decreased with basal area. Species wind-firmness was ordered as: yellow birch > sugar maple = eastern hemlock = American beech > ironwood > basswood = other hardwoods = other softwoods. Our method remained an indirect method of measuring wind intensity and its real test would require a comparison with anemometer measurements during a windstorm. Despite its indirect nature, the method is both simple and ecologically sound. Hence, it opens the door to conducting similar windthrow studies in other ecosystems.展开更多
基金provided in part by the Humboldt Foundation which provided money for an extensive stay in Germany to CM where part of the paper was writtenthe Swiss National Science Foundation through a post-doctoral fellowship to MM
文摘Human impacts on Earth's ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affecting the resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide and the provision of important ecosystem services. This Anthropocene era is forcing us to reconsider past and current forest management and silvicultural practices, and search for new ones that are more flexible and better at dealing with the increasing uncertainty brought about by these accelerating and cumulative global changes. Here, we briefly review the focus and limitations of past and current forest management and silvicultural practices mainly as developed in Europe and North America. We then discuss some recent promising concepts, such as managing forests as complex adaptive systems, and approaches based on resilience, functional diversity, assisted migration and multi-species plantations, to propose a novel approach to integrate the functionality of species-traits into a functional complex network approach as a flexible and multi-scale way to manage forests for the Anthropocene. This approach takes into consideration the high level of uncertainty associated with future environmental and societal changes. It relies on the quantification and dynamic monitoring of functional diversity and complex network indices to manage forests as a functional complex network. Using this novel approach, the most efficient forest management and silvicultural practices can be determined, as well as where, at what scale, and at what intensity landscape-scale resistance, resilience and adaptive capacity of forests to global changes can be improved.
文摘Unlike fire or insect outbreaks, for which a suppression program can be implemented, it is impossible to prevent a windstorm event or stop it while it is occurring. Reducing stand susceptibility to windstorms requires a good understanding of the factors affecting this susceptibility. Distinct species- and size-related differences in stem windthrow susceptibility are difficult to obtain because it is impossible to distinguish their relative effects from those of wind intensity. Using a damage assessment database (60 20-metre radius plots) acquired after an exceptional wind storm in Western Quebec in 2007, we developed an approach in which proportions of windthrown sugar maple poles were used as bio-indicators of wind intensities affecting the plots. We distinguished between single and interactive effects of wind intensity, species, stem size, and local basal area on stem windthrow susceptibility. The best logistic regression model predicting stem windthrow included the wind intensity bio-indicator, species, basal area, and the species by diameter at breast height (DBH, 1.3 m) interaction. Stem windthrow probability generally increased with DBH and decreased with basal area. Species wind-firmness was ordered as: yellow birch > sugar maple = eastern hemlock = American beech > ironwood > basswood = other hardwoods = other softwoods. Our method remained an indirect method of measuring wind intensity and its real test would require a comparison with anemometer measurements during a windstorm. Despite its indirect nature, the method is both simple and ecologically sound. Hence, it opens the door to conducting similar windthrow studies in other ecosystems.
