Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century: The Science of Ecosytem Management

Over the past decade, a sea change has occurred in the field of forestry. A vastly increased understanding of how ecological systems function has transformed the science from one focused on simplifying systems, producing wood, and managing at the stand-level to one concerned with understanding and managing complexity, providing a wide range of ecological goods and services, and managing across broad landscapes.

Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is an authoritative and multidisciplinary examination of the current state of forestry and its relation to the emergent field of ecosystem management. Drawing upon the expertise of top professionals in the field, it provides an up-to-date synthesis of principles of ecosystem management and their implications for forest policy. Leading scientists, including Malcolm Hunter, Jr., Bruce G. Marcot, James K. Agee, Thomas R. Crow, Robert J. Naiman, John C. Gordon, R.W. Behan, Steven L. Yaffee, and many others examine topics that are central to the future of forestry:

• new understandings of ecological processes and principles, from stand structure and function to disturbance processes and the movement of organisms across landscapes
• challenges to long-held assumptions: the rationale for clearcutting, the wisdom of short rotations, the exclusion of fire
• traditional tools in light of expanded goals for forest landscapes
• managing at larger spatial scales, including practical information and ideas for managing large landscapes over long time periods
• the economic, organizational, and political issues that are critical to implementing successful ecosystem management and developing institutions to transform knowledge into action

Featuring a 16-page center section with color photographs that illustrate some of the best on-the-ground examples of ecosystem management from around the world, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is the definitive text on managing ecosystems. It provides a compelling case for thinking creatively beyond the bounds of traditional forest resource management, and will be essential reading for students; scientists working in state, federal, and private research institutions; public and private forest managers; staff members of environmental/conservation organizations; and policymakers.

Kathryn A. Kohm is an editor and writer specializing in biodiversity conservation and other natural resource issues.


Jerry Franklin is Professor of Ecosystem Analysis, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Franklin is co-author of Conserving Forest Biodiversity, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century, Salvage Logging and Its Ecological Consequences, and Towards Forest Sustainability, all from Island Press.


Frederick J. Swanson is a research geologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, in Corvallis, Oregon, and a Forest Service lead scientist for the ecosystem research team based at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascade Range. He has been a leader of the National Science Foundation–sponsored Long-Term Ecological Research program based at the Andrews Forest since 1980.Throughout a thirty year career, Dr. Swanson’s research has focused on interactions of geophysical processes with forest and stream ecosystems in mountain landscapes under both natural conditions and influences of land management, including roads. His interest in interactions of science and policy is reflected in part by his co-editorship of the book Bioregional Assessments: Science at the Crossroads of Management and Policy (Island Press, 1999). He holds a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, both in geology.