Preface
The importance to society of environmental services, provided by forest ecosystems, has
significantly increased during the last few decades. A growing global concern with the
deterioration of forests, beginning perhaps most noticeably in the 1980s, has led to an
increasing public awareness of the environmental, cultural, economic, and social values that
forests provide. Around the world, ideas of sustainable, close-to-nature, and multi-functional
forestry have progressively replaced the older perception of forests as only a source for
timber. The international impetus to protect and sustainably manage forests has come from
global initiatives at management, conservation, and sustainable development related to all
types of forests and forestry. A few of the more notable initiatives include:
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the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development, UNCED),
regional follow-ups to the Earth Summit such as the Montreal Process and Helsinki
Accords,
the forest elements of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and
the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).
Since the original Earth Summit, forest management and forest research organizations
around the world have been developing and testing new approaches to deliver sustainable
forest management in three areas: timber production, environmental and ecosystem
management, and social forestry. The subsequent emergence of major international
initiatives such as the Montreal Process and the Helsinki Accords and the growing
importance accorded to forest certification programs in many countries around the world,
attest to international recognition of the importance of sustainable forestry both within the
forest sector and for the general public.
Concerning the evolution of scientific knowledge to address the challenges posed by
sustainable forestry, many disciplines have played important roles in advancing and applying
new principles and practices in support of sustainable forest management. In 2003, the
editors of this volume, representing diverse sections of the International Union of Forest
Research Organizations (IUFRO), began collaborating to organize a trans-disciplinary
conference broadly focused on the theory and practice of sustainable forestry. The
conference was held during April 2005 in Edinburgh, Scotland (UK), and this volume
presents a compilation of what we believe were some of the more significant contributions.
The conference addressed four broad themes relevant to sustainable forest management:
1. Science and Policy
2. Inventory and Monitoring
3. Statistics and Modelling
4. Information and Knowledge Management
Major advances have been made within each of these themes in recent years. Although the
work of each forest resource scientist may tend to fall predominantly within only one of these
broad thematic areas, it should require only a little reflection to appreciate that each theme
has strong, mutual interdependencies with at least some, if not all, of the others. With that
consideration in mind, the major objectives of the conference and the present work were to:
1. Review the current state of the art within each of the four major themes.
2. Foster dialog across thematic areas concerning both strategic and operational
approaches to integrate research on sustainable forestry.
3. Enhance and encourage international collaboration towards sustainable forestry
practice worldwide.
Several organizations have contributed to this volume in terms of committing either financial
or staff resources or logistical support. The editorial staff represents IUFRO sections 4.02
(Forest Resources Inventory and Monitoring, 4.03 (Informatics, Modelling, and Statistics),
and 6.12 (Forest Policy and Governance) as well as diverse organizations. Other
organizations contributing support to the Edinburgh conference in particular include the
European Forest Institute, and the Environmental Systems Research Institute, UK. We wish
to thank Forest Research for hosting the conference and specifically acknowledge Martin
Abrahams, Evelyn Hall, Roz Shields, Liz Poulsom and Louise Sing of Forest Research,
Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland, for their invaluable assistance with the local arrangements and
logistics for the Edinburgh conference. Finally, the senior editor would like to specifically
acknowledge Tiffany Dong (USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station) for
her invaluable assistance with assembly of the final CD proceedings product.
Keith M. Reynolds, senior editor, USDA Forest Service, USA
Alan Thomson, editor, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Canada
Michael Köhl, editor, University of Hamburg, Germany
Margaret Shannon, editor, University of New York, Buffalo, USA
Duncan Ray, editor, Forest Research, UK
Keith Rennolls, editor, University of Greenwich, UK