Forestry - Forestry And Its Broader Goals, Resource Values Managed In Forestry, Harvesting And Management, Silvicultural Systems And Management
landscapes landscape forested hunted
Forestry is the science of harvesting, planting, and tending trees, within the broader context of the management of forested landscapes. Traditionally, forestry has focused on providing society with sustainable yields of economically important products, especially wood for the manufacturing of lumber or paper, or for the generation of energy. Increasingly, however, forestry must consider other, non-traditional goods and services provided by the forested landscape, such as populations of both hunted and non-hunted wildlife, recreational opportunities, aesthetics, and the management of landscapes to maintain clean air and water. Because not all of these values can always be accommodated in the same area, there are often conflicts between forestry and other uses of the landscape. However, the use of systems of integrated management can often allow an acceptable, working accommodation of forestry and other resource values to be achieved.
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Forestry is a science, but also somewhat of an art. The ultimate objective of forestry is to design and implement management systems by which forested landscapes can yield sustainable flows of a range of ecological goods and services. The most important of the resource values dealt with in forestry are products directly associated with tree biomass, such as lumber, paper, and fuel-wood. However, n…
Forested landscapes support a variety of resource values. Some of these are important to society because they are associated with natural resources that can be harvested to yield commodities and profit. Other values, however, are important for intrinsic reasons, or because they are non-valuated but important ecological goods and services. (That is, their importance is not measured in monetary unit…
Forest harvesting refers to the methods used to cut and remove trees from the forest. Harvesting methods vary greatly in their intensity. Clear-cutting is the most intensive system, involving the harvest of all trees of economic value at the same time. The areas of clear-cuts can vary greatly, from patch-cuts smaller than a hectare in size, to enormous harvests thousands of hectares in area, somet…
Silvicultural systems are integrated activities designed to establish, tend, protect, and harvest crops of trees. Activities associated with silvicultural systems are carried out on particular sites. However, the spatial and temporal patterns of those sites on the landscape must also be designed, and this is done using a management plan appropriate to that larger scale. The landscape-scale managem…
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