Influence of forest planning alternatives on landscape pattern and ecosystem processes in northern Wisconsin, USA

Landscape-level habitat supply modelling to develop and evaluate management practices that maintain diverse forest values in a dry forest ecosystem in southern British Columbia

“…Initially, maintaining a sustainable timber supply was a key objective, but concerns about wildlife habitat (Baskent and Jordan, 1991;Hansen et al, 1993), visual resources (Sheppard and Harshaw, 2001) and evolving issues such as climate change (He et al, 2002) have created the need to consider multiple objectives in forest management planning. Management (Mladenoff et al, 1993;Wallin et al, 1994;Gustafson and Crow, 1996;Radeloff et al, 2006;Zollner et al, 2008), natural disturbances (Pickett and White, 1985) and interactions between natural and managed disturbances Fall et al, 2004;Shifley et al, 2006) shape landscape pattern and associated ecological processes.…”

Application of indicators network analysis to support local forest management plan development: a case study in Molise, Italy

“…Forest planning models should include spatial aspects associated with the protection of wildlife, biodiversity, scenic beauty, reduction in water sedimentation and soil erosion (Baskent & Keles 2005), but also recreational activities and other socio-cultural aspects. For this reason, to ensure the maintenance of healthy ecosystems (Zollner et al 2008) a forest management plan requires a landscape perspective (Shifley et al 2000, Baskent & Keles 2005). This requirement is particularly obvious in the Mediterranean basin, where some regions have only isolated forest patches and the management of wildlife and biodiversity along with the adaptation of plants and animals to environmental changes are impaired (Scarascia-Mugnozza 2009).…”

Forest landscape models, a tool for understanding the effect of the large-scale and long-term landscape processes

“…Forest planning is an increasingly important activity in which forest landscape models can provide valuable assistance and Zollner et al (2008) provides a very nice contribution that demonstrates a way to evaluate alternative management plans and assess if they are likely to meet their stated, multiple objectives. They used LANDIS to predict forest composition and landscape pattern under seven alternative forest management plans drafted for the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin, USA.…”

“…The purpose of the workshop was to study and discuss the strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and limitations of the modeling approach and applications embodied in forest landscape modeling. Over 50 papers were presented at the workshop, of which 12 were selected in this special issue, and one paper (Zollner et al, 2008) was invited. We have organized the papers into three sections that describe current activities in forest landscape modeling: (1) effects of climate change on forest vegetation, (2) forest landscape model applications, and (3) model research and development.…”