What is it about?
In recent history, both a growing awareness of how scientific and societal uncertainty impacts management decisions and of the intrinsic value of nature have suggested new approaches to forest management, with a growing debate in forest science over the need for a paradigmatic shift from the classic conventional world view, based on determinism, predictability, and output-oriented management, towards a world view that has roots in complex adaptive systems theory and is consistent with a nature-based ethic. A conceptual framework under this context is provided by systemic silviculture.
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Why is it important?
This paper analyzes how this approach can be linked to three fundamental moments of the history of forestry and forest science: the Dauerwald theory, Gurnaud’s control method, and the origins of environmental ethics. Relationships with the recent history of forest management science and current research perspectives are also highlighted.
Perspectives
Systemic silviculture can be considered as a novel paradigm, a new conceptual framework and ethical perspective on forest management because it explicitly considers the intrinsic value of forests, accepting the challenge coming fromthe development of an ethic of nature. In this new paradigm, forest management should try to maintain ecological resilience, i.e., enabling the system to react to stresses, while at the same time allowing for adaption when external conditions change. This means maintaining a flexible approach as an effective way for capturing the information and perspectives necessary to manage social–environmental systems and take into account all values of the forests, and not only the instrumental value. All this underpins a change in the logic of forestry action from norms to process and, consequently, in the way forest science is conceived and implemented.
Piermaria Corona
CREA Research Centre for Forestry and Wood
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Historical roots and the evolving science of forest management under a systemic perspective, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, February 2021, Canadian Science Publishing,
DOI: 10.1139/cjfr-2020-0293.
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