Climate Adaptive Forestry Management
Summary
Climate adaptive forestry management refers to an integrative approach that anticipates and responds to the effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. It combines forward-looking planning, dynamic silvicultural practices and continuous monitoring to maintain forest health, productivity and the delivery of ecosystem services. Central to this approach is the recognition of forests as complex adaptive systems in which species composition, structure and function are managed flexibly to enhance resistance (the capacity to withstand disturbance), resilience (the capacity to recover) and adaptive capacity (the ability to reorganise under new conditions). Techniques include diversifying species and genotypes, adjusting planting regimes, employing assisted migration and refining thinning and harvest schedules. Practical applications range from restoring degraded landscapes and optimising carbon sequestration to safeguarding biodiversity and sustaining timber and non-timber values. By embedding iterative learning, stakeholder engagement and landscape-scale coordination, climate adaptive forestry aims to reconcile ecological uncertainties with social and economic objectives on regional to global scales.
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Climate Adaptive Forestry Management publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in climate adaptive forestry management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Adaptive management: A structured decision-making process that uses monitoring and evaluation to iteratively adjust management actions in response to changing conditions and new information.
Assisted migration: The deliberate transfer of tree species or genotypes to areas projected to become climatically suitable, enhancing long-term survival and function under climate change.
Resilience: The ability of a forest ecosystem to absorb disturbances and reorganise while retaining essential structure, processes and feedbacks.
Resistance: The capacity of a forest to withstand climatic or disturbance events without significant loss of function or structure.
Complex adaptive system: A network of interacting biological, physical and social components that can self-organise and adapt in response to external and internal changes.
References
- Forestry in the Face of Global Change: Results of a Global Survey of Professionals. Current Forestry Reports (2023).
- From Management to Stewardship: Viewing Forests As Complex Adaptive Systems in an Uncertain World. Conservation Letters (2015).
- Operationalizing forest‐assisted migration in the context of climate change adaptation: Examples from the eastern USA. Ecosphere (2022).
- Challenges to the Reforestation Pipeline in the United States. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change (2021).
- Climate change mitigation through adaptation: the effectiveness of forest diversification by novel tree planting regimes. Ecosphere (2017).
About these summaries
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