Small-scale Forestry

, Volume 16, Issue 2, pp 195–218 | Cite as

Rapid Silviculture Appraisal to Characterise Stand and Determine Silviculture Priorities of Community Forests in Nepal

  • Edwin Cedamon
  • Ian Nuberg
  • Govinda Paudel
  • Madan Basyal
  • Krishna Shrestha
  • Naya Paudel
Research Paper
First Online:
Accepted:
  • 205 Downloads

Abstract

Community forestry in Nepal is an example of a successful participatory forest management program. Developments in community forestry in four decades have focused on the social and governance aspects with little focus on the technical management of forests. This paper presents a silviculture description of community forests and provides silviculture recommendations using a rapid silviculture appraisal (RSA) approach. The RSA, which is a participatory technique involving local communities in assessing forests and silviculture options, is a simple and cost-effective process to gather information and engage forest users in the preparation of operational plans that are relevant to their needs. The RSA conducted on selected community forests in Nepal’s Mid-hills region shows that forests are largely comprised of dominant crowns of one or two species. The majority of studied community forests have tree densities below 500 stems per hectare as a consequence of traditional forest management practices but the quality and quantity of the trees for producing forest products are low. Silviculture options preferred by forest users generally are those which are legally acceptable, doable with existing capacities of forest users and generate multiple forest products. For sustainable production of multiple forest products, the traditional forest management practices have to be integrated with silviculture-based forest management system.

Keywords

Forest structure Multiple-use forest Selective harvesting Participatory forest management 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) as project FST/2011/076. Details of the project and full list of partners can be found at http://aciar.gov.au/project/fst/2011/076. The authors would like to thank the independent reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Finally yet importantly, we thank the community forest users in Kavre and Lamjung who participated in the rapid silviculture appraisal and to Mr. Ganesh Ray and Mr. Chandra Man Dangol, District Forest Officers of Kavre and Lamjung Districts, respectively.

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Copyright information

© Steve Harrison, John Herbohn 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Edwin Cedamon
    • 1
  • Ian Nuberg
    • 1
  • Govinda Paudel
    • 2
  • Madan Basyal
    • 2
  • Krishna Shrestha
    • 3
  • Naya Paudel
    • 2
  1. 1.School of Agriculture, Food and WineThe University of Adelaide, Waite CampusUrrbraeAustralia
  2. 2.ForestAction NepalLalitpurNepal
  3. 3.School of Social SciencesUniversity of New South WalesSydneyAustralia

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