1.
Forestry
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Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, using, conserving, and repairing forests and associated resources to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human and environment benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands, the science of forestry has elements that belong to the biological, physical, social, political and managerial sciences. A practitioner of forestry is known as a forester, other terms are used a verderer and a silviculturalist being common ones. Silviculture is narrower than forestry, being concerned only with forest plants, Forest ecosystems have come to be seen as the most important component of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital applied science, craft, and technology. Forestry is an important economic segment in various industrial countries, the preindustrial age has been dubbed by Werner Sombart and others as the wooden age, as timber and firewood were the basic resources for energy, construction and housing. The development of forestry is closely connected with the rise of capitalism, economy as a science and varying notions of land use. Roman Latifundiae, large estates, were quite successful in maintaining the large supply of wood that was necessary for the Roman Empire. Large deforestations came with respectively after the decline of the Romans, however already in the 5th century, monks in the then Byzantine Romagna on the Adriatic coast, were able to establish stone pine plantations to provide fuelwood and food. This was the beginning of the massive forest mentioned by Dante Alighieri in his 1308 poem Divine Comedy, the use and management of many forest resources has a long history in China as well, dating back to the Han Dynasty and taking place under the landowning gentry. A similar approach was used in Japan and it was also later written about by the Ming Dynasty Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi. In Europe, land rights in medieval and early modern times allowed different users to access forests. The notion of commons refers to the traditional legal term of common land. The idea of enclosed private property came about during modern times, however, most hunting rights were retained by members of the nobility which preserved the right of the nobility to access and use common land for recreation, like fox hunting. Systematic management of forests for a yield of timber is said to have begun in the German states in the 14th century, e. g. in Nuremberg. Typically, a forest was divided into sections and mapped. Large firs in the black forest were called „Holländer“, as they were traded to the Dutch ship yards, large timber rafts on the Rhine were 200 to 400m in length, 40m in width and consisted of several thousand logs. The crew consisted of 400 to 500 men, including shelter, bakeries, ovens, timber rafting infrastructure allowed for large interconnected networks all over continental Europe and is still of importance in Finland. The notion of Nachhaltigkeit, sustainability in forestry, is connected to the work of Hans Carl von Carlowitz
2.
Forest restoration
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Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a factor that determines climax forest composition. Forest restoration is a form of reforestation, but it differs from conventional tree plantations in that its primary goals are biodiversity recovery. Tree species planted are those that are typical of, or provide a critical function in. However, wherever people live in or near restoration sites, restoration projects include economic species amongst the planted trees. Economic indices of success include the value of forest products and ecological services generated, payments for such ecological services and forest products can provide strong incentives for local people to implement restoration projects. Even in protected areas, there are often large deforested sites, if protected areas are to act as Earth’s last wildlife refuges, restoration of such areas will be needed. FLR recognizes that forest restoration has social and economic functions and it aims to achieve the best possible compromise between meeting both conservation goals and the needs of rural communities. As human pressure on landscapes increases, forest restoration will most commonly be practiced within a mosaic of other forms of forest management, tree planting is not always essential to restore forest ecosystems. A lot can be achieved by studying how forests regenerate naturally, identifying the factors that limit regeneration and these can include weeding and adding fertilizer around natural tree seedlings, preventing fire, removing cattle and so on. This is accelerated or assisted natural regeneration and it is simple and cost-effective, but it can only operate on trees that are already present, mostly light-loving pioneer species. Because this is a process, biodiversity recovery can usually be accelerated by planting some climax forest tree species, especially large-seeded. It is not feasible to plant all the species that may have formerly grown in the original primary forest and it is usually unnecessary to do so. In large parts of the world, forest fires cover a heavy toll on forests and that can be because of provoked deforestation in order to substitute forests by crop areas, or in dry areas, because of wild fires occurring naturally or intentionally. This indeed has dire consequences on both the quality of the habitats and their related fauna, the primary stakeholders in this cooperative restoration effort are the U. S. Forest Service, the City of Ashland, Lomaktsi Restoration Project, and the Nature Conservancy. Located in the dry forests of southern Oregon, the threat of wildfire is a reality for land managers, the boundaries of the city of Ashland intersect with the surrounding forest in what is referred to as the wildland-urban interface. Historically, the forests of this region experienced a relatively frequent fire return interval, a century of fire exclusion and suppression on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has led to increased forest density and fuel loads, and thus a more persistent threat of devastating wildfire. The AFR project has implemented restoration techniques and prescriptions that aim to replicate the process of succession in dry
3.
Forest
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A forest is a large area dominated by trees. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as density, tree height, land use, legal standing. According to the widely used Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered four billion hectares or approximately 30 percent of the land area in 2006. Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe, Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earths biosphere, and contain 80% of the Earths plant biomass. Forests at different latitudes and elevations form distinctly different ecozones, boreal forests near the poles, tropical forests near the equator, higher elevation areas tend to support forests similar to those at higher latitudes, and amount of precipitation also affects forest composition. Human society and forests influence each other in both positive and negative ways, Forests provide ecosystem services to humans and serve as tourist attractions. Forests can also affect peoples health, human activities, including harvesting forest resources, can negatively affect forest ecosystems. Although forest is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition, there are three broad categories of forest definitions in use, administrative, land use, and land cover. Land use definitions are based upon the purpose that the land serves. For example, a forest may be defined as any land that is used primarily for production of timber, land cover definitions define forests based upon the type and density of vegetation growing on the land. Such definitions typically define a forest as an area growing trees above some threshold and these thresholds are typically the number of trees per area, the area of ground under the tree canopy or the section of land that is occupied by the cross-section of tree trunks. Under such land cover definitions, and area of land only be defined as forest if it is growing trees, areas that fail to meet the land cover definition may be still included under while immature trees are establishing if they are expected to meet the definition at maturity. Under land use definitions, there is variation on where the cutoff points are between a forest, woodland, and savanna. Under some definitions, forests require high levels of tree canopy cover, from 60% to 100%, excluding savannas. Other definitions consider savannas to be a type of forest, the term was not endemic to Romance languages, and cognates in Romance languages, such as Italian foresta, Spanish and Portuguese floresta, etc. are all ultimately borrowings of the French word. The exact origin of Medieval Latin foresta is obscure, uses of the word forest in English to denote any uninhabited area of non-enclosure are now considered archaic. The word was introduced by the Norman rulers of England as a term denoting an uncultivated area legally set aside for hunting by feudal nobility. These hunting forests were not necessarily wooded much, if at all, however, as hunting forests did often include considerable areas of woodland, the word forest eventually came to mean wooded land more generally
4.
Sustainability
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In ecology, sustainability is the property of biological systems to remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of biological systems. In more general terms, sustainability is the endurance of systems, the organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics and culture. Sustainability science is the study of development and environmental science. Sustainability can also be defined as a process characterized by the pursuit of a common ideal. An ideal is by definition unattainable in a time and space. However, by persistently and dynamically approaching it, the results in a sustainable system. Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival of humans, ways of reducing negative human impact are environmentally-friendly chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection. Information is gained from green chemistry, earth science, environmental science, Ecological economics studies the fields of academic research that aim to address human economies and natural ecosystems. Moving towards sustainability is also a challenge that entails international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles. The name sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere, sustain can mean “maintain, support, or endure”. ”The 2005 World Summit on Social Development identified sustainable development goals, such as economic development, social development and environmental protection. This view has been expressed as an illustration using three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing, in fact, the three pillars are interdependent, and in the long run none can exist without the others. The three pillars have served as a ground for numerous sustainability standards and certification systems in recent years. Standards which today explicitly refer to the bottom line include Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade. Some sustainability experts and practitioners have illustrated four pillars of sustainability, one such pillar is future generations, which emphasizes the long-term thinking associated with sustainability. There is also an opinion that considers resource use and financial sustainability as two pillars of sustainability. Sustainable development consists of balancing local and global efforts to meet human needs without destroying or degrading the natural environment. The question then becomes how to represent the relationship between those needs and the environment, a study from 2005 pointed out that environmental justice is as important as sustainable development
5.
Ecosystem
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An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles, as ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces. Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun and it generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and they also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present, although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate. Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance, classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this. The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley, Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as The whole system, including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment. Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates, Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope. G. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the driver of the ecosystem. Most mineral nutrients, on the hand, are recycled within ecosystems. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, external factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem
6.
Riparian zone
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A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth, Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by hydrophilic plants. In some regions the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, the word riparian is derived from Latin ripa, meaning river bank. Riparian zones may be natural or engineered for soil stabilization or restoration and these zones are important natural biofilters, protecting aquatic environments from excessive sedimentation, polluted surface runoff and erosion. They supply shelter and food for aquatic animals and shade that limits stream temperature change. When riparian zones are damaged by construction, agriculture or silviculture, biological restoration can take place, usually by human intervention in erosion control and revegetation. If the area adjacent to a watercourse has standing water or saturated soil for as long as a season, because of their prominent role in supporting a diversity of species, riparian zones are often the subject of national protection in a Biodiversity Action Plan. These are also known as a Plant or Vegetation Waste Buffer, research shows that riparian zones are instrumental in water quality improvement for both surface runoff and water flowing into streams through subsurface or groundwater flow. Particularly, the attenuation of nitrate or denitrification of the nitrates from fertilizer in this zone is important. The use of wetland riparian zones shows a high rate of removal of nitrate entering a stream. The meandering curves of a river, combined with vegetation and root systems, slow the flow of water, sediment is trapped, reducing suspended solids to create less turbid water, replenish soils, and build stream banks. Pollutants are filtered from surface runoff, enhancing water quality via biofiltration, the riparian zones also provide wildlife habitat, increased biodiversity, and wildlife corridors, enabling aquatic and riparian organisms to move along river systems avoiding isolated communities. Riparian vegetation can also forage for wildlife and livestock. They provide native landscape irrigation by extending seasonal or perennial flows of water, nutrients from terrestrial vegetation are transferred to aquatic food webs. The vegetation surrounding the stream helps to shade the water, mitigating water temperature changes, the vegetation also contributes wood debris to streams, which is important to maintaining geomorphology. From a social aspect, riparian zones contribute to nearby property values through amenity and views, space is created for riparian sports such as fishing, swimming and launching for vessels and paddlecraft. The protection of zones is often a consideration in logging operations. The undisturbed soil, soil cover, and vegetation provide shade, plant litter, and woody material, factors such as soil types and root structures, climatic conditions and vegetative cover determine the effectiveness of riparian buffering
