Abstract
The increased understanding of how forests grow—forest stand dynamics Forest stand dynamics will not be in italics when referring to the subject (e.g., forest stand dynamics), but will be in italics when referring to the book (e.g., Forest Stand Dynamics) is both changing our perceptions of forests and enabling us to provide more commodity and non-commodity values from forests sustainably. This understanding has occurred over many decades and generations of academicians, students, and practicing foresters, with the authors within this festschrift playing major roles. Within recent decades, the realization that forests can be thought of as complex adaptive systems (CAS) offers more opportunities for understanding forest stand dynamics—provided CAS behaviors are not blindly accepted as governing forests. Key CAS concepts include hierarchies, emergent properties, initial conditions, tipping points, feedbacks, and outliers among others. Our increased understanding will enable us to increase the abundance of forest non-commodity and commodity values since we will be able to manage—or not manage—with more accuracy and use emerging technical tools. This understanding will also lead to our next opportunity for increasing the abundance of forest values: managing across a landscape of many stands.
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Oliver, C.D. (2022). Forest Stand Dynamics, Complex Adaptive Systems, and the Future. In: Baker, P.J., Larsen, D.R., Saxena, A. (eds) Forests as Complex Social and Ecological Systems. Managing Forest Ecosystems, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88555-7_15
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