0392-C1
Gordon L. Baskerville 1
The challenge in forest management is to develop processes for designing management specific to each forest, to achieve a specified future condition in that forest, and to implement that planned management so as to create the future forest that retains a desired range of values, while recognizing natural temporal/spatial forest dynamics. The challenge to research is to identify and quantify the functional cause-effect mechanisms that permit the manager to design/build the future forest.
While contemporary approaches to forest management tend to focus on actions taken today, the approach taken by the McGregor Model Forest (MMF) has focused on what the future forest could become, and should become. This is logical, in that the ultimate target of forest management is what the future forest becomes. The approach presumes that the cause-effect mechanisms underlying the forecast are sufficiently known/quantified to permit the creation and evaluation of an array of reasonably possible futures for a particular forest.
The approach that the MMF has evolved makes it possible for individuals to visualize a range of reasonably possible futures for a forest, before having to choose one `future forest' that becomes the focus of forest management. The functional basis underlying this approach provides people from all perspectives with consistent visual expectations of what the future forest could become, and of what it should become, with management over time.
Those may not appear to be big steps in science, but they represent huge steps in communicating science in the context of managing a forest.
There are two key realities of forest dynamics. First, we cannot have a biological value at one place in a forest all the time. This is because natural local biological dynamics related to stand development are continually changing the local conditions.
Second, as a result of those same dynamics, it is possible to have a biological value available somewhere in a whole forest, all the time. That is, it is possible to retain conditions related to, for instance, 200-year-old stand conditions, by systematically allowing some stands to escape harvest and pass beyond 200 years old before they are harvested. Simple as that may seem, it requires a high level of management skills/techniques to regulate the temporal/spatial availability of local stand conditions across a whole forest, of perhaps several hundred thousand hectares, over a time horizon of 100+ years into the future.
Managing a forest for multiple values is a challenge in designing and creating a future forest that continuously has, somewhere within its bounds, the pattern of stand conditions to support each and every target value. Sustaining an array of values is possible because a forest system is naturally dynamic in both temporal and spatial dimensions. Knowledge of the cause-effect basis for each value is essential to the design of effective forest management.
A major expectation of the model forest program was that focusing science on a set of actual forests would bring together people with a breadth of views with respect to what mix of values was appropriate to maintain in that forest, and that these perspectives would be recognized in the design and management of the future forest.
One indication of the scale of this challenge is the rarity of examples of whole forests that have been managed as whole forests, over an appropriate period of time, as opposed to having some local stands being managed for immediate value in wood, habitat, immediate stream protection, and so on. There is a sharp distinction in the science needed in managing what people do in a forest locally from time to time, and, managing what the whole forest becomes over a time horizon equivalent to the return time of the target values.
The dominant challenge in managing a whole, dynamically changing forest, is to identify each value in an objectively measurable manner. Indeed, that is the central issue, given the axiom that we manage what we measure. The manager must place the availability of each value in an objective (quantitative) context of its relationship to some combination of stand type, stage of stand development, and the emerging geographic pattern of stand types and stages of stand development.
The dominant perspective on management of a forest in Canada has been regulating what actions people take from place to place in the forest today; that is, the management is of what people do in the forest. This is largely because we lack objective measures for functional relationships between non-timber values and the features that we actually manage in the forest. Rarely is the focus of management on what the forest, as a whole, is to become over a time span of several human generations, as a cumulative result of those local actions. The determination of `good management' and `bad management' tends to be with reference to contemporary tools that people prefer, or dislike, and not in the context of using tools and actions in a functional context, to bring the forest as a whole towards a defined goal condition. If it is a forest we would manage, then our measures of progress (or absence thereof) must be in/of the forest, and not merely of some elements therein.
Managing a forest is a matter of ensuring that the stand level, and forest level conditions, that support each value which is a target of management, always are available some place in the forest. Note that because trees grow and compete, stands change over time, and therefore, the face of the forest as a whole is changing continuously. To be meaningful, forest management must address both temporal and spatial issues.
There are two key points in the above: (i) the manager must understand the functional relationships that determine the availability of each target value, as these relate to the pattern of stand types and stages of stand development, and, (ii) the manager must ensure that the temporal/spatial pattern of stand types and stages of stand development across the forest, into the future, will be such as to continuously retain the conditions for each target value somewhere in the forest.
Being able to quantitatively describe a future forest in terms of what stand types, at what stages of stand development, will be at what places, at what times in that future forest, is the essential basis for developing effective forest management. Thus, the ability to literally view a range of `reasonably possible future forests' such as those provided by the McGregor Model Forest (MMF) via simulations, that allow anyone to evaluate the future forest, represents an enormous step in bringing reality to both public and technical discussions of managing what a future whole forest should become.
Sample outputs resulting from the MMFA's simulation process are shown in Figure 1, and a selection of papers relating to the project is listed in 'references'.
Forest management involves a sequence of decision-making. It is important to remember that, by definition, a decision is a choice amongst forecasts. Identifying the forecast we like best is easy. Problems in making decisions, and in enduring the results of decisions, lie in the functional realism, or more commonly the absence of functional realism, in the forecasts from which the manager chooses a future forest to be created by management. The tools we use in decision-making must inform and empower the forest manager in the context of managing what the forest, in its most inclusive context, becomes over time in the future.
Decisions in planning what a whole forest is to become require forecasts with temporal and spatial perspectives that exceed ordinary human comprehension, and therefore require a special set of tools to enhance the temporal/spatial comprehension of the manager. Forest planning must adopt a functional approach to forecasting the future forest, and those functionally-based forecasts must extend at least as far into the future as the time it takes to replace the target value that has the slowest return time for the conditions that support the value.
This commonly means the time horizon for forest management planning is equivalent to the career spans of ten or more forest managers. An unambiguous management structure is essential, both to implement management in the forest, and treatment of each management plan as an hypothesis about the future forest. As with all hypotheses, the correct approach is to seek out where/how the hypothesis is incorrect. This is the basis of learning.
In like manner, `forest' management decisions must adopt a spatial perspective broad enough to embrace the maintenance of the spatial pattern of conditions that supports the target values. That frequently means comprehending spatial dynamics at the scale of several hundred thousand hectares, a scale that is well beyond unassisted human perception. Making decisions at the spatial and temporal dimensions of managing a forest comprehensible to the public owners of the forest is not straightforward. However, the MMF's approach represents a major step forward, in that it characterizes the future forest in a manner that allows any person to evaluate the future forest.
Not surprisingly, there is considerable variation amongst the goals set for various forests. Variation in goals is to be expected, in that each forest is unique in the context of the stand types and ages of stands that make up the present forest, and in the context of the relationship of the forest to needs of local industry, and the needs of the broader community. Thus the context for forest `design', and for the implementation of forest management to create a chosen `designed' forest, should be unique to each forest, and to the society that uses the forest.
While the theory for managing a forest has been around for a very long time, actual management of whole forests has been difficult to achieve: forests that have been managed for 100 years, a modest time horizon in forest management, do not exist in Canada. (There are a small number, however, that have been managed for approximately 50 years.)
The problem has not been biological, so much as it has been achieving human comprehension of the temporal and spatial scales involved in natural forest dynamics. Studies have indicated that few people have a time horizon longer than the payments left on their present automobile. In terms of spatial scale, it is surprising how few people can visualize one hectare, let alone a 200 000 ha forest. It is little wonder that there is weak public understanding of 200-year time horizons in the management of 200 000 ha forests.
As a response to this need, the MMF's tools have made it possible for forest managers and the interested public to view an array of temporal-spatial reasonably possible forest futures. This helps fill a gap in Canadian forest management: the relative absence of a forest-level view as a context for evaluating how local stand actions will influence what the entire future forest becomes.
What makes the MMF approach stand out is the extent to which the research has directly facilitated the human review of what a whole forest could become. The research at the MMF has focused directly on improving the basis of the decisions in management of the forest as a whole. In particular, tools, and protocols for using tools, have been developed that allow interested parties to preview 'a future forest' under specific defined management approaches.
Forecasts are central to any/every decision. When one reviews a decision that turned out to be wrong, the review invariably reveals that the decision-makers chose the `best' forecast -- but either the forecast was functionally incorrect, or, the management was not implemented in the forest in a manner that was biologically consistent with the basis of the forecast. For most forest values, management involves long-range forecasts. A central issue, therefore, is the availability and reliability of those forecasts for interpretation and evaluation by successive human generations who will endure the results of current management decisions.
The scenarios of the future McGregor forest (as illustrated in Figure 1) for a particular long-term management plan may seem unsophisticated to scientists. However, for the public owners of a forest, such a visual tour of `the forest to be' effectively empowers them to take a reasoned role in the decisions about what their future forest should become. Even the most interested citizen will find it impossible to correctly conceptualize the future forest, if the only information available is a list of what management actions are being taken, where, this year. Most current approaches address only these local current actions, and then only in a generic context. Rarely do such approaches allow a person to create the reasoned perception of what one specific forest will become in the future.
The common problem in discussion of forest management, whether amongst professionals or the public, is an implied belief that nature is static. The reality is that a forest is changing continually, whether we manage it or not. While publicly owned forests should be managed to achieve a publicly acceptable future forest, that management must be consistent with natural temporal/spatial dynamics relating to natural biological function in the forest. The foundation of forest management is quantitative science, and management can be most reliably communicated in a quantitative science-based format.
The science format, however, is not commonly open to reasoned evaluation of the future forest by the citizen-owners of the public forests. Thus, the MMF pictorial presentation of a range of reasonably possible futures for a forest represents a major step in enhancing the public's comprehension of the future forests they could have, and of the management that would achieve any one reasonably possible future of their choice.
The MMF approach to displaying the `emerging forest' in its whole form, under a specified management option, allows any and all members of the public to take part in a reasoned discussion of the future forest. This is crucial, because only when there is agreement on what the future forest is to become, can there be reasoned discussion of what tools are appropriate in managing the forest towards that goal forest state.
The approach employed by MMF ensures that a wide array of issues with respect to the future forest can be viewed by any/all persons, in the technically consistent context of a set of `pictures' of the future forest. That is, the futures from amongst which the target forest is to be selected, can be evaluated by a viewer knowing it is reasonably possible to achieve the chosen future forest.
This approach may not seem technically elegant with respect to one particular forest value; however, formally addressing the temporal/spatial reality through forecasts of what the forest could become in the future, is essential to reasoned communication between/amongst lay, managerial, and scientific participants, in forest management decision-making.
Most importantly, discussion of reasonably possible future forests must be sufficiently explicit, in that it relates to one specific target forest, to allow consistent application of both scientific reasoning, and lay evaluation of probable outcomes, in the selection of the one reasonably possible future forest to be created in that forest, by specified management, over time.
The constraint approach, of bounding the use of tools commonly used in contemporary forest management, is dangerous in that it eliminates the need to measure/manage non-target values. That is, so long as the constraints are applied, the values are assumed to be there, and there is no need to measure them. That is a high-risk situation. Systems theory tells us that a dynamic system cannot be managed by constraint alone. Management of a dynamic system requires a state-dependent approach that explicitly recognizes system structure and system dynamics. At least two Canadian human generations may have wasted a lot of time and effort debating the management of forests for a range of values, to be achieved via various forms of constraining timber harvests.
In the McGregor approach, the design of management for a value can be based directly on the spatial relationships of that value to system structure and function. In the MMF, we are looking at a giant step forward in the facilitation of full participation in the selection of a future forest, with the comfort of knowing that natural temporal/spatial dynamics of the forest are being honored in the forecasts we employ.
McGregor Model Forest Association (Scott, Anne, ed.) The McGregor Story: Pioneering Approaches to Sustainable Forest Management. Prince George, British Columbia: McGregor Model Forest Association, 2001.
Accessible Forest Planning Tools. Lockwood, Carey. Prince George, British Columbia: McGregor Model Forest Association, 1998
Investigating the Integration of Externally Developed Models with the "McGregor Approach to SFM" through Selected Case Studies (Robson Valley EFMPP and Morice & Lakes IFPA). Scott Wolfe, Dwight; Pettersen, Kevin; and Hvezda, Peter. Prince George, British Columbia: McGregor Model Forest Association, 2002.
Echo Planning System: Planner's Guide. Prince George, British Columbia: McGregor Model Forest Association, 1998.
Echo Planning System: Overview Manual. Prince George, British Columbia: McGregor Model Forest Association, 1998.
Figure 1: The McGregor Model Forest's simulations help stakeholders correctly conceptualize a forest's possible futures.
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