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We draw on an in-depth longitudinal analysis of conflict over harvesting practices and decision authority in the British Columbia coastal forest industry to understand the role of institutional work in the transformation of organizational fields. We examine the work of actors to create, maintain, and disrupt the practices that are considered legitimate within a field (practice work) and the boundaries between sets of individuals and groups (boundary work), and the interplay of these two forms of institutional work in effecting change. We find that actors' boundary work and practice work operate in recursive configurations that underpin cycles of institutional innovation, conflict, stability, and restabilization. We also find that transitions between these cycles are triggered by combinations of three conditions: (1) the state of the boundaries, (2) the state of practices, and (3) the existence of actors with the capacity to undertake the boundary and practice work of a different institutional process. These findings contribute to untangling the paradox of embedded agency—how those subject to the institutions in a field can effect changes in them. We also contribute to an understanding of the processes and mechanisms that drive changes in the institutional lifecycle.

Climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies (CCAMS) are changes to the management of production forests motivated by the need to mitigate climate change, or adapt production forests to climate change risks. Sweden is employing CCAMS with unclear implications for biodiversity and forest ecosystem services (ES). Here, we synthesized evidence from 51 published scientific reviews, to evaluate the potential implications for biodiversity and a range of provisioning, regulating, and cultural ES, from the adoption of CCAMS relative to standard forestry practice. The CCAMS assessed were the adoption of (i) mixed-species stands, (ii) continuous cover forestry, (iii) altered rotation lengths, (iv) conversion to introduced tree species, (v) logging residue extraction, (vi) stand fertilization, and (vii) altered ditching/draining practices. We highlight the complexity of biodiversity and ES outcomes, identify knowledge gaps, and emphasize the importance of evidence-based decision making and landscape-scale planning when navigating choices involving the widespread adoption of CCAMS.

Human impacts on Earth’s ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affecting the resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide and the provision of important ecosystem services. This Anthropocene era is forcing us to reconsider past and current forest management and silvicultural practices, and search for new ones that are more flexible and better at dealing with the increasing uncertainty brought about by these accelerating and cumulative global changes. Here, we briefly review the focus and limitations of past and current forest management and silvicultural practices mainly as developed in Europe and North America. We then discuss some recent promising concepts, such as managing forests as complex adaptive systems, and approaches based on resilience, functional diversity, assisted migration and multi-species plantations, to propose a novel approach to integrate the functionality of species-traits into a functional complex network approach as a flexible and multi-scale way to manage forests for the Anthropocene. This approach takes into consideration the high level of uncertainty associated with future environmental and societal changes. It relies on the quantification and dynamic monitoring of functional diversity and complex network indices to manage forests as a functional complex network. Using this novel approach, the most efficient forest management and silvicultural practices can be determined, as well as where, at what scale, and at what intensity landscape-scale resistance, resilience and adaptive capacity of forests to global changes can be improved.

Compared with far-developed measures and methods for mono-specific forest stands, the silvicultural prescriptions for mixed-species stands are at their early beginning. However, they are essential for the well-conceived establishment, design, and control of mixed-species stands, currently promoted in many countries worldwide. Here, we review the state of the art and we further develop silvicultural prescriptions for mixed-species stands for steering of experiments, stand modeling, and silviculture. We review which aspects of tree species mixing are most relevant for management goal achievement. We found the maintenance of species diversity and structural heterogeneity for ecological purpose, stabilizing productivity, and social-economic performance as main objectives. We give an overview of quantitatively formulated silvicultural prescriptions for steering mixed-species stands for forest practice, long-term experiments, forest stand models. Compared with the sophisticated guidelines for mono-specific stands, prescriptions for mixed stand are often mainly qualitative and vague. Then, we introduce methodological approaches in development for steering mixture: measures for spatial and temporal separation, species-specific growing space requirements for crop trees, coefficients for equivalence and density modification, and basic relationships for steering tree number and area-based mixing proportions. Finally, we draw conclusions for further development of methodological approaches for silvicultural steering of experiments, implementation in stand simulators, and for silvicultural operations. We see the need for improving the quantitative spatially explicit rules based at tree or cohort level, for substantiating the knowledge on species-specific allometry, growing area, tree-to-tree distances, and position-dependent competition indices for steering tree removal. We discuss the prospects and limitations of establishing silvicultural prescriptions for mixed-species stands that inevitably will be more complicated than those for mono-specific stands, and we draw conclusions for next steps in science and practice.

Cities worldwide are engaging in large-scale greening projects motivated by the wide range of documented ecological, economic, and social benefits of urban forests. Urban forested natural areas are a critical component of the total urban forest but are often overlooked and typically lack formal management frameworks. One approach to addressing this deficiency may be to borrow from traditional ecological management frameworks and practices (that is, silviculture). Although urban forested natural areas share similarities with rural forests, the impacts of urbanization on forest stand dynamics may require modification of these methods and in some cases development of novel silvicultural guidelines. We present an urban silviculture framework through which we synthesize emerging research and identify challenges and opportunities for advancing goal setting, assessments, and on-the-ground management strategies. Adapting silvicultural practices to cities can improve the long-term sustainability of urban forests and establish management approaches that address future conditions in forests across the urban–rural continuum.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century California, USA, has experienced a substantial increase in the frequency of large wildfires, often with extreme impacts on people and property. Due to the size of the state, it is not surprising that the factors driving these changes differ across this region. Although there are always multiple factors driving wildfire behavior, we believe a helpful model for understanding fires in the state is to frame the discussion in terms of bottom-up vs. top-down controls on fire behavior; that is, fires that are clearly dominated by anomalously high fuel loads from those dominated by extreme wind events. Of course, this distinction is somewhat artificial in that all fires are controlled by multiple factors involving fuels, winds, and topography. However, we believe that fires clearly recognizable as fuel-dominated vs. wind-dominated provide interesting case studies of factors behind these two extremes. These two types of fires differ greatly in their (1) geographical distribution in the state, (2) past fire history, (3) prominent sources of ignition, (4) seasonal timing, (5) resources most at risk, and (6) requirement for different management responses.

Distribution of tree species is a function of climatic (such as temperature and precipitation) and topographic (such as altitude, slope, and exposure) parameters. It is thought that any change in climatic parameters would be one of the most effective factors to influence the distribution of species. The adaptation of populations would depend on the phenotypic variation, strength of selection, interspecies competition, and biotic interactions. Moreover, many ecologic and anthropogenic processes that are related with each other would affect the distance of distribution. Hence, the detailed and reliable information about the geographical distribution of species under changing climate conditions is of significant importance for various ecologic and protection practices. For this reason, the present study focused on the estimation and analysis of the potential distribution of Anatolian boxwood in different scenarios (SSPS245 and SSPS585) and the estimation and analysis of environmental factors influencing this distribution. Using the current and future (2040-2060-2080-2100) climate scenarios, the habitats that are suitable for the distribution of Anatolian boxwood in Turkey were modeled using the maximum entropy model and then mapped using ArcGIS software. In determining the potential distribution areas, 21 parameters (19 bioclimatic and 2 topographic variables) were used in 21 field-based formation points. The results showed that the most important variables affecting the distribution of species were annual mean temperature (Bio1), minimum temperature of the coldest month (Bio6), mean temperature of the coldest quartile (Bio11), precipitation of the driest month (Bio14), precipitation of the driest quartile (Bi017), and precipitation of the warmest quartile (Bio18). According to two future climate change scenarios, the estimation models showed that there might be decreases up to 6% in Anatolian Boxwood population in years 2040–2060 and, in year 2100; the potential area of distribution will shift to north and higher altitudes in comparison to the current ones and increase by 1–4%. The human help needed for maintaining the existence of new species in the suitable distribution areas suggests the necessity of reviewing and re-designing the current forestry plans and silvicultural practices within the context of climate change.

The public view of tree plantations is somewhat ambiguous. While planting a single tree is generally considered good for the environment, planting a million trees raises concerns in some circles. Although plantations are often used to compensate for bad forestry practices, to willingly simplify otherwise complex forest ecosystems, or as a strategy for allowing the current petroleum‐based economy to continue on its course, we believe plantations have a legitimate place in the sustainable management of forests. Multi‐purpose plantations, designed to meet a wide variety of social, economic, and environmental objectives, can provide key ecosystem services, help preserve the world's remaining primary forests, and sequester an important proportion of the atmospheric carbon released by humans over the past 300 years.

An important challenge for silvicultural practices is the conservation of tree diversity while fulfilling the traditional objectives of forest management, most notably timber harvesting. The purpose of this study was to compare the tree diversity before and after the application of silvicultural treatments in a temperate forest in northern Mexico. Fifteen experimental plots, each measuring 2500 m2, were established to evaluate the immediate effect of four silvicultural treatments. These treatments were identified by their levels of management: intensive (clearcut, removal 100%), semi-intensive (removal of 59-61% of basal area), conservative (removal of 29-31% of basal area), and a control group. New forest guidelines, in contrast to conventional approaches, were applied to the semi-intensive and conservative treatments based on health and diversity conditions. Basal area, canopy cover, tree and total volume were measured in each plot. The Importance Value Index, alpha diversity, and evenness were estimated before and after treatments. Eighteen species belonging to five genera and five families were found in the study area. The species with the highest ecological values were Pinus durangensis, P. teocote, Quercus sideroxyla, and Quercus convallata with IVI numbers between 13.6 and 24.5%. Alpha diversity was intermediate (Margalef: 2.9 to 3.8), while dominance and evenness were above average compared to other studies (Simpson: 0.69 to 0.77; Shannon-Wiener: 1.44 to 1.6; Pielou: 0.76 to 0.85). The species evenness index in the conservative treatment was high (Sorensen, Jaccard, quantitative Sorensen and Morisita-Horn; 88 to 99%), although abundance decreased. Overall, there were no significant differences in IVI values and diversity indicators before and after treatments, with the exception of the clearcut treatment. When associating the diversity indices with stand variables, only the Pielou's evenness index showed a significant relationship between them. We concluded that both the conservative and semi-intensive treatments did not generate significant changes in tree diversity, but the former had slightly higher alpha diversity indices. These results can provide a better insight on silvicultural practices and their effects on species composition.

Aims The growing demand from forest managers is to identify silvicultural practices to overcome projected water scarcity during the next decades. One solution is to mix tree species in the same stand, thereby increasing resource partitioning and minimizing competition for limited soil water. This study investigates the mixture approach for Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. and Pinus sylvestris L. during an extreme summer drought event. Methods During the summer drought event in 2016, we analyzed the isotopic signatures of large- and small-tree xylem and soil water throughout the soil profile to assess the depth of water uptake for both tree species. We also measured predawn leaf water potentials (PLWP) to assess water availability for individual tree species. Results When grown in pure stands, both species primarily utilized soil water near the surface. In contrast, partial niche complementarity for limited water resources between the two species in mixed stands resulted in less water constraint (i.e., less negative PLWP) for oak trees compared to pure stands, especially for small trees. Conclusions Results from this study show that contrasting water use strategies can change water availability for trees and could help some species, though not all, to cope with the water scarcity predicted in a changing climate.