This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

This edited volume presents original scientific research and knowledge synthesis covering the past, present, and potential future fire ecology of major US forest types, with implications for forest management in a changing climate. The editors and authors highlight broad patterns among ecoregions and forest types, as well as detailed information for individual ecoregions, for fire frequencies and severities, fire effects on tree mortality and regeneration, and levels of fire-dependency by plant and animal communities. The foreword addresses emerging ecological and fire management challenges for forests, in relation to sustainable development goals as highlighted in recent government reports. An introductory chapter highlights patterns of variation in frequencies, severities, scales, and spatial patterns of fire across ecoregions and among forested ecosystems across the US in relation to climate, fuels, topography and soils, ignition sources (lightning or anthropogenic), and vegetation. Separate chapters by respected experts delve into the fire ecology of major forest types within US ecoregions, with a focus on the level of plant and animal fire-dependency, and the role of fire in maintaining forest composition and structure. The regional chapters also include discussion of historic natural (lightning-ignited) and anthropogenic (Native American; settlers) fire regimes, current fire regimes as influenced by recent decades of fire suppression and land use history, and fire management in relation to ecosystem integrity and restoration, wildfire threat, and climate change. The summary chapter combines the major points of each chapter, in a synthesis of US-wide fire ecology and forest management into the future. This book provides current, organized, readily accessible information for the conservation community, land managers, scientists, students and educators, and others interested in how fire behavior and effects on structure and composition differ among ecoregions and forest types, and what that means for forest management today and in the future.

If we want to continue existing on this earth, an era of renewable energy and materials is urgently needed. What role could mass timber, with its potential to replace concrete and steel, have in ensuring the planet’s survival? This book retraces wood’s passage from stewarded seed in the soil of forests, to harvested biomass, to laminated walls in a living room, through to its disassembly, pausing at each step in the supply chain of mass timber to consider the labor and economies involved, looking closely at the way wood is grown, sourced, and transported, and its impacts on the biodiversity of the forest and the health of our ecosystems. It explores why historically entrenched contexts of extractivism make such sensitive approaches difficult to cultivate across landscapes and industrial frameworks. Along the way, common assumptions about mass timber are debunked, including its fire performance, its strength, and its role in carbon sequestration. Having identified contemporary technical, cultural, and spiritual gaps preventing the transition towards a fully timber built environment, it outlines how we might move forward. A more sensitive species-based methodology is essential, with designers as choreographers of carbon, transferring and trading between forest, factory, site, and beyond. This will be an important read for anyone interested in our built environment and how to design it to be non-extractive, especially those with an interest in architecture, urbanism, forests, ecology, and timber, as well as students of architecture and design interested in the generative nature of materials and design processes.

Positive Impact Forestry is a primer for private woodland owners and their managers on managing their land and forests to protect both ecological and economic vitality. Moving beyond the concept of "low impact forestry," Thom McEvoy brings together the latest scientific understanding and insights to describe an approach to managing forests that meets the needs of landowners while at the same time maintaining the integrity of forest ecosystems. "Positive impact forestry" emphasizes forestry's potential to achieve sustainable benefits both now and into the future, with long-term investment superseding short-term gain, and the needs of families—especially future generations—exceeding those of individuals. Thom McEvoy offers a thorough discussion of silvicultural basics, synthesizing and explaining the current state of forestry science on topics such as forest soils, tree roots, form and function in trees, and the effects of different harvesting methods on trees, soil organisms, and sites. He also offers invaluable advice on financial, legal, and management issues, ranging from finding the right forestry professionals to managing for products other than timber to passing forest lands and management legacies on to future generations. Positive Impact Forestry helps readers understand the impacts of deliberate human activities on forests and offers viable strategies that provide benefits without damaging ecosystems. It speaks directly to private forest owners and their advisers and represents an innovative guide for anyone concerned with protecting forest ecosystems, timber production, land management, and the long-term health of forests. Named the "Best Forestry Book for 2004" by the National Woodlands Owners Association.

A captivating analysis of the past, present, and future of northeastern forests and the forces that have shaped them The northeastern United States is one of the most densely forested regions in the country, yet its history of growth, destruction, and renewal are for the most part poorly understood--even by specialists. In this engaging look at both the impermanence and the resilience of the northeastern forest ecosystems, Charles D. Canham provides a synthesis of modern ecological research and explores critical threats that include logging, fire suppression, disease, air pollution, invasive species, and climate change. Providing a historical perspective on how northeastern forests have changed since the arrival of European settlers, Canham also utilizes new theoretical models to predict how these ecosystems will change and adapt to an uncertain future. This is an informed and accessible investigation of an endangered natural landscape that examines the ramifications of the scientific controversies and ethical dilemmas shaping the future of northeastern forests.

"Southern forests provide innumerable benefits. Forest scientists, managers, owners, and users have in common the desire to improve the condition of these forests and the ecosystems they support. A first step is to understand the contributions science has made and continues to make to the care and management of forests. This book represents a celebration of past accomplishments, summarizes the current state of knowledge, and creates a vision for the future of southern forestry research and management. Chapters are organized into seven sections: "Looking Back," "Productivity," "Forest Health," "Water and Soils," "Socioeconomic," "Biodiversity," and "Climate Change." Each section is preceded by a brief introductory chapter. Authors were encouraged to focus on the most important aspects of their topics; citations are included to guide readers to further information."

Fundamental changes have occurred in all aspects of forestry over the last 50 years, including the underlying science, societal expectations of forests and their management, and the evolution of a globalized economy. This textbook is an effort to comprehensively integrate this new knowledge of forest ecosystems and human concerns and needs into a management philosophy that is applicable to the vast majority of global forest lands. Ecological forest management (EFM) is focused on policies and practices that maintain the integrity of forest ecosystems while achieving environmental, economic, and cultural goals of human societies. EFM uses natural ecological models as its basis contrasting it with modern production forestry, which is based on agronomic models and constrained by required return-on-investment. Sections of the book consider: 1) Basic concepts related to forest ecosystems and silviculture based on natural models; 2) Social and political foundations of forestry, including law, economics, and social acceptability; 3) Important current topics including wildfire, biological diversity, and climate change; and 4) Forest planning in an uncertain world from small privately-owned lands to large public ownerships. The book concludes with an overview of how EFM can contribute to resolving major 21st century issues in forestry, including sustaining forest dependent societies.

Across the United States, people are developing new relationships with the forest ecosystems on which they depend, with a common goal of improving the health of the land and the well-being of their communities. Practitioners and supporters of what has come to be called community forestry are challenging current approaches to forest management as they seek to end the historical disfranchisement of communities and workers from forest management and the all-too-pervasive trends of long-term disinvestment in ecosystems and human communities that have undermined the health of both. Community Forestry in the United States is an analytically rigorous and historically informed assessment of this new movement. It examines the current state of community forestry through a grounded assessment of where it stands now and where it might go in the future. The book not only clarifies the state of the movement, but also suggests a trajectory and process for its continued development.

In the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.

This report assesses the experiences of forest rehabilitation in Vietnam and draws strategic lessons from these experiences to guide new forest rehabilitation projects. The report highlights lessons from Vietnam's experiences that will be helpful beyond the country border. This report has the following structure: the remainder of chpater one provides the conceptual clarification and theoritical underpinnings for the study and introduces the methodology. Chapter two provides background information and context for the outcomes of forest rehabilitation in Vietnam, including basic information on Vietnam, its forest cover, forestry sector and policies that are relevant to forestry and forest rehabilitation. Chapter three gives an overview of forest rehabilitation in Vietnam from its inception in the 1950s until today, as the country carries out its latest nationwide forest rehabilitation effort, the 5 million hectares reforestation project. Chapter four analyses in detail forest rehabilitation project that were analysed in the field study carried out as part of this study. Chapter five draws lessons from the report.