Introduction: Looking Back and Into the Future

Abstract

Our objective in this book is to describe and discuss forests and their significance in our world. Human societies need the products of forests—not just wood and wood products but all the ecological goods and services that forests provide: biodiversity and its essential benefits, carbon sequestration and storage, stable water supplies, land protection, recreation. But relatively few people are aware of these services and benefits, so we hope to contribute to raising awareness of these values and the importance of forests, and to providing the science-based information needed to guide political action and decisions about them. Toward achieving these objectives we consider how forests grow and why different types occur in different parts of the earth; what constrains their growth, why they are important to us and how they should be managed.