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Ecosystem Services from Forest Landscapes pp 221–248Cite as

Natural Disturbances and Forest Management: Interacting Patterns on the Landscape

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Abstract

The main tenets of forest health management are to simultaneously maintain productivity and all native species over time, which will in turn maintain ecosystem services provided by the forest. Natural disturbances oppose the stable flow of materials, while removals of timber short-circuit the flow of organic materials to the deadwood pool and reduce the average age of stands and trees across the landscape. It is likely that natural forests possess some level of redundancy with respect to the amount of deadwood and older trees and stands that are needed to maintain forest health, making it safe to remove timber products from the forest. Although this safe level of harvest is not exactly known, using practices such as close-to-nature forestry or best management practices with regard to structural features left after harvesting can ensure adequate residuals and help maintain forest resilience to disturbance. Furthermore, natural and human disturbances are not totally additive because, by chance, some stands are harvested before they are disturbed by fire or wind, making stand and tree-age distributions somewhat resilient to human disturbance. Harvesting stands and trees over a range of ages in the forest matrix of the landscape, thus minimizing truncation of stand and tree-age distributions due to harvest, combined with a system of reserved/reference forests to serve as a baseline for the effects of forest management, is probably the best way to create resilient forests and maintain adequate habitat for native species at all spatial extents and productivity over time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Center for Forest Ecology, St. Paul, MN, USA

    Lee E. Frelich

  2. Institute of Forestry & Rural Engineering, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Kalev Jõgiste & Kristi Parro

  3. Center for Forest Disturbance Science, US Forest Service Southern Research Station, Athens, GA, USA

    John A. Stanturf

  4. Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, Salaspils, Latvia

    Endijs Baders

Authors
  1. Lee E. Frelich
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  2. Kalev Jõgiste
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  3. John A. Stanturf
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  4. Kristi Parro
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  5. Endijs Baders
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lee E. Frelich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Forest Research Institute, Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada

    Ajith H. Perera

  2. Institute of Forestry and Rural Engineering, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Urmas Peterson

  3. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas (CADIC), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

    Guillermo Martínez Pastur

  4. Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science Northern Research Station, US Forest Service, Delaware, Ohio, USA

    Louis R. Iverson

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Frelich, L.E., Jõgiste, K., Stanturf, J.A., Parro, K., Baders, E. (2018). Natural Disturbances and Forest Management: Interacting Patterns on the Landscape. In: Perera, A., Peterson, U., Pastur, G., Iverson, L. (eds) Ecosystem Services from Forest Landscapes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74515-2_8

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