This book presents the latest scientific and management information on multiaged silviculture, an emerging strategy for managing forestry systems worldwide. Over recent decades, forest science and management have tended to emphasize plantation silviculture. Whilst this clearly meets our wood production needs, many of the world's forests need to be managed far less intensively and more flexibly in order to maintain their natural ecosystem functions together with the values inherent in those processes. Developing multiaged management strategies for these complex forest ecosystems represents a global challenge to successfully integrate available science with sustainable management practices. Multiaged Silviculture covers the ecology and dynamics of multiaged stands, the management operations associated with regeneration, tending, and stocking control, and the implications of this strategy on production, genetic diversity, and stand health. It is primarily aimed at graduate level students and researchers in the fields of forestry and silviculture, but will also be of relevance and use to all professional foresters and silviculturists.
1. Introduction to Multiaged Silviculture ; 2. History of Multiaged Silviculture ; 3. Disturbance Dynamics of Multiaged Stands ; 4. Dynamics of Multiaged Stands ; 5. Dynamics of Forest Gap and Group Openings ; 6. Multiaged Management Systems ; 7. Multiaged Stocking Control ; 8. Regenerating Multiaged Stands ; 9. Tending Multiaged Stands ; 10. Transformations to Multiaged Stand Structures ; 11. Managing Multiaged Stands for Diverse Objectives ; 12. Growth Projection in Multiaged Stands ; 13. Volume and Economic Production of Multiaged Stands ; 14. Genetics and Multiaged Silviculture ; 15. Multiaged Structures and Stand Health ; 16. Social Justifications for Multiaged Silviculture