Interactions between Forest Resource Management and Landscape Structure

Logging of natural forests can directly alter landscape structure, defined here as the spatial pattern of patches of overstory forest cover of different ages. Logging can also alter landscape structure through interactions with other disturbances such as wildfire. Here, I briefly outline interactions between logging of wet forests, altered fire dynamics and landscape structure, with particular emphasis on the wet ash eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australia. There is compelling evidence for increased fire proneness of logged and regenerated wet forest stands around the world. There is also evidence of accumulated effects on fire dynamics, so-called “landscape traps” that are associated with multiple, spatially dispersed cutblocks in wood production landscapes. That is, changes in stand-level flammability may accumulate over larger areas, thereby influencing patterns of spatial contagion in fire behavior. The impacts of altered patterns of landscape structure on biodiversity and ecosystem processes are often poorly understood. New science is required to better understand, quantify, and predict biotic responses to the new landscape dynamics and the spatial and temporal patterns of forest cover now occurring in many landscapes. Altered patterns of landscape structure have the potential to trigger ecosystem collapse in some forested environments. However, predicting ecosystem collapse is difficult and may even be impossible from a practical perspective. Managers and researchers need to become better informed about the risks of negative effects of combinations of ecosystem stressors that lead to novel spatial patterns in landscape structure and may make forest ecosystems more prone to landscape traps, regime shifts, and ecosystem collapse.