۱- Introduction

۲- Key features: feedbacks, time lags, and cross-scale interactions

۳- Management Challenges: Scale mismatches

۴- Management opportunities: institutional interventions

۵- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Many of the most pressing threats to forests result from complex interactions between multiple stressors and require management on large spatial and temporal scales. For this reason, many ecosystem managers have begun to recognize the need to consider the broader context of decisions, and how outcomes of past, present and future decisions in one location may interact with outcomes of such decisions in other locations nearby. The landscape has been put forth as an appropriate unit for such holistic approaches to management. However, as there are differing definitions of landscapes, it can be difficult to develop frameworks for management. Moreover, many definitions do not fully account for the many ways social and ecological conditions and processes interact within landscapes. Building on emerging theoretical and empirical literature, I offer a perspective on temperate forest landscapes as social-ecological systems: nested sets of coevolving social and natural subsystems connected through feedbacks, time lags, and cross-scale interactions. This interdisciplinary framing emphasizes the biogeophysical and socio-cultural influences on landscapes and the need to consider these influences – and the interactions among them – in management. I discuss challenges to managing forest landscapes as social-ecological systems that stem from mismatches in the temporal and spatial scales on which ecological and social systems typically function, as well as opportunities for policies, formal organizations, and governance networks.

Introduction

Many of the most pressing threats to forests today require management on large spatial and temporal scales. Wildfires, invasive species, and plant diseases, for example, do not observe administrative boundaries; rather, their behavior is a function of ecological patterns and processes across large areas. Moreover, land management practices influence ecological patterns and processes well into the future with impacts that often go unobserved for long periods of time. For these reasons, the forest management literature has begun to recognize the need to consider the broader context of decisions, and how the outcomes of present and future decisions in one location may interact with environmental conditions and processes, which are themselves outcomes of past decisions, and decisions made in other locations nearby (Filotas et al., 2014; Messier et al., 2015; Nocentini et al., 2017; Rist and Moen, 2013; Stephens et al., 2013). In other words, emerging paradigms of forest management emphasize the need to consider the many ways social and ecological conditions and processes (i.e., systems) interact to shape landscapes across space and time. The landscape has been recognized as one of the most suitable spatial units for managing forests and other ecological systems (Brunckhorst, 2011; Forman, 1995; Forman and Godron, 1986; Phillips, 1998; Wu, 2012). Indeed, many of the social and ecological processes that affect trees and the forests they comprise occur on spatial and temporal scales typical of visible areas of land commonly referred to as landscapes. These processes unfold over geographic extents larger than the patch yet smaller than the region, and over time horizons on the order of decades and centuries (Fig. 1). However, as there are differing definitions of landscapes, it can be difficult to develop frameworks for landscape management (Antrop, 2006).