Ecology and Management of Forest Landscapes

With an emphasis on ecology as the key word in landscape ecology and landscape as the context, we discuss the importance of ecological theory as the basis for the, study of forest landscapes. We identify and discuss the core components and challenges in current forest landscape ecological research with an emphasis on how they relate to forest management. Among these challenges are issues such as scaling, ecosystem interactions, modelling and technology/information transfer, hypothesis development, and experimental design at broader scales. Although an extensive literature exists focusing on many of these issues, few contributions have addressed them in the context of forest landscape ecology and management. We propose a conceptual framework working toward a more complex and realistic analysis of forest landscapes. Finally, we provide our perspective on the key challenges for incorporating landscape ecological principles into forest landscape management by highlighting the missing links between academic researchers who often deal with abstract ideas and decision makers who need realistic information presented in a user-friendly format.