TITLE:
Emerging Threats to Forests: Resilience and Strategies at System Scale
AUTHORS:
Timothy O. Randhir, Ayten Erol
KEYWORDS:
Forest; Resilience; Systems; Emerging Threats
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.4 No.3A,
March
29,
2013
ABSTRACT: Forests
provide multiple ecosystem services that are critical to sustain societies and
ecosystems. Protecting the forest systems become imperative as human demand for
forest products and services increase. In addition to current stressors,
several emerging threats pose serious implications on the survival and
sustainability of forest ecosystems. These include climatic change, invasive
species, natural disasters, land use change, and pest/diseases that can
severally impact the ability of forest to sustain ecosystem services. There is
a need for using a systems-based framework to increase resilience of
forest systems to cope with these threats. We review literature on these
threats and propose a systems-framework for forest resilience. While
strategies for each threat are often easier, comprehensive strategies that can
handle multiple threats and specific to forest type is required. There is also
a need for further research into forest resilience and landscape-scale response
and resilience.