Change is in the air: future challenges for applied forest research

Abstract

Forests provide a wide range of benefits to people. Forest plantations on former agricultural land for commercial and restoration purposes may enhance ecosystem services, including biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Incorporating these ecosystem services into resource management decisions is of paramount importance. Efforts towards the sustainable management of forest ecosystems for climate change mitigation give opportunities to establish a new relationship between researchers and forests. Growing and competing demands for food, biomass, timber, and environmental services is posing severe challenges to effective forest governance, considering the impact of global change. However, tree plantations can hardly match biological diversity and structural attributes of the original forest cover, which warrants for future sustainable mitigation through forest activities.

Keywords

• Biodiversity conservation
• Carbon sequestration
• Climate change mitigation
• Forest management