Talk:Forest management

Forest as property

There is little here about the value of forest land as property. Land management needs more material. Despite its ecological value, it also has economic value. Not all land is public land which the article seems to assume. --71.245.164.83 (talk) 04:38, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

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Should sustainable forest management be merged to here?

A discussion has been started on whether sustainable forest management should be merged to here? The discussion is at the talk page of WikiProject Climate Change. I am not sure what to think of that proposal. For now, I have added an excerpt under "types". The question is: what are other types of forest management that are "not sustainable"? Probably every type of forest management will want to be sustainable? Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge. EMsmile (talk) 09:37, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I propose merging sustainable forest management and Afforestation and Proforestation into Forest management. I think the content in those articles can easily be explained in the context of Forest management, and a merge would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Forest management.Chidgk1 (talk) 06:42, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Support: Agree with all of the above. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:40, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Undecided: I've voiced my concern about merging sustainable forest management into forest management in the section just above this section. This is an unanswered question to me. Also, have you purposefully left reforestation out of your list of articles to be merged in? I look forward to some forestry people weighing in soon, hopefully. The current setup is certainly rather messy with many similar, overlapping articles. EMsmile (talk) 17:45, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I do agree that the first step is to merge sustainable forest management with forest management. There is no justification for a separate article on just the sustainable aspects alone. The next merge I would vote for is to add proforestation to forest management - there is no justification for keeping a separate article on this curious side term. Then we can tackle the other 2 possible mergers ie afforestation and reforestation. Reforestation deals with rehabilitation of natural forest so I would vote it can be merged with forest management. But afforestation is a rather different beast since it deals with the culturing of forests in areas that have never been naturally forested. And there are some very big afforestation projects. What then about the article on forestry which is all inclusive covering both the science and management of forests? Forestry in principle should be the mother article and the ones discussed above sub-articles. The article forest which delineates the ecosystem should remain a standalone. There are several other articles dealing with forestry which might be added to this discussion - Forest farming, the ecosystem approach to forest management -Forest Principles - Forest produce - Forest protection - Forest transition ..... ASRASR (talk) 12:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this detailed comment! It's true that forestry article is in an inexplicably poor state right now, but it's probably a good idea to keep it mostly focused on the science, and have it point here for the established practices - whether traditional or derived from forestry research.

With afforestation and reforestation, the first step is probably to figure out what content belongs in which article, since it seems like there a lot of overlap, with some paragraphs in afforestation really talking about restoring recently lost forest and vice versa.

It is possible that we might keep afforestation as a good, separate article if we move paragraphs like the one on Trillion Tree Program out of Deforestation and climate change and simply merge that article (a lot of which is just long excerpts anyway) back into deforestation itself, but that requires further investigation.

As for the others, there is now a whole discussion about merging forest farming and a lot of other such articles into agroforestry, which seems reasonable to me.

Forest protection seems like an obvious merge into this article.

Forest product should be merged somewhere too, but it seems like the (cited) content there isn't very cohesive, and is probably better off being pulled into better-organized existing articles. (I.e. everything under the "Forest Products in Sustainability") heading. Once that is done, the article title might be best merged to a subheading in Forest, rather than here?

Forest transition is described as an observed, but still somewhat theoretical trend that is a not-fully-intended outcome of disparate forest management actions, so keeping it as a separate article looks reasonable - particularly if it can be updated with proper references beyond 2000s.

And lastly, Forest Principles seems like it would do best as a subsection in United Nations Forum on Forests. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:45, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@EMsmile Yes I left reforestation out on purpose as it is well-known so I thought proposing merging would generate too much opposition Chidgk1 (talk) 09:29, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Oppose: The key to me is the following sentence in the forest management introduction: "Management objectives can be for conservation, utilisation, or a mixture of the two." Conceptually, there *are* forms of forest management which are unsustainable, including clearcutting, deforestation, etc. The sustainable forest management article is a fairly well developed, while forest management is not much more than a stub. I would leave them as-is for now. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:45, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

@DASonnenfeld Sorry I don’t quite understand your reasoning here. I take your point that that some forest management is unsustainable but surely merging the sustainable forest management article in would vastly improve the forest management article would it not? Chidgk1 (talk) 09:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Do you also oppose merging proforestation and afforestation into here? Chidgk1 (talk) 09:32, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

An analogy might be economic development and sustainable development. While logically the latter is a variation of the former, they are sufficiently different to merit their own articles. As I read the lead, proforestation would seem to be synonymous with forest conservation; since the latter redirects to sustainable forest management, I think it would be okay to merge those two articles. And, indeed, clearcutting remains an active (and still debated) forest management practice. Rather than having one huge article, I would suggest thinking about ways of making forest management a broad, meta-entry; while maintaining subtopics such as sustainable forest management as standalone articles. My two cents... DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 12:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi DA Sonnenfeld, Would you be able to help with making forest management a broad, meta-entry? Can you adapt its current structure accordingly, perhaps by using excerpts like I did for the section on "sustainable forest management" within forest management? This would help bring clarity. EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Emsmile, I'm flat out now for a bit. But here is where one might start (from the 'See also' section of the article): Community forestry; Coppicing; Even-aged timber management; Forest farming. One could reasonably add Clearcutting, as well, I think. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 19:38, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I've continued this discussion in a separate section below. EMsmile (talk) 07:44, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Comment: it's true that if we merged sustainable forest management to here then it would take up about 80% of the space of this article. This could be a bit imbalanced. The question is though, how do we want to describe any other forest management types in the section on Types? Which other types are there exactly if "sustainable forest management" is just one type of many? We can't really say that clearcutting, deforestation is a type of forest management, or is it? If we did identify other clear types and if they had sub-articles then we could also use excerpts from there, instead of a merger. EMsmile (talk) 15:07, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree to merge proforestation: And I agree to merge proforestation to forest management. That article is rather bad so will need some condensing. It was set up in 2019 by an editor who never edited since then. When you put the term "proforestation" into Google it gets about 215,000 results only. Probably not really a notable topic for a stand-alone Wikipedia article. EMsmile (talk) 15:12, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Oppose: This will create confusion, this is a specific term. The other terms have multiple definitions. Also the number of google hits is irrelevant; proforestation is a topic contained in dozens of scientific papers. Alli Wells (talk) 19:35, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Alli Wells, just because the term is used in many scientific papers doesn't per se mean it needs to be a stand-alone article. The topic is sufficiently similar to other topics describing the same thing. As was pointed out above: "As I read the lead, proforestation would seem to be synonymous with forest conservation; since the latter redirects to sustainable forest management, I think it would be okay to merge those two articles.". Merging doesn't mean the term or content would disappear from Wikipedia. Quite the contrary, it could mean that more people find out about it if it's merged (and redirected) into a broader article. EMsmile (talk) 19:56, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Merging sustainable forest management into forest management makes sense; merging afforestation and/or proforestation to subsume them under forest management does not. These terms can certainly be included on a forest management page and while retaining their own page (and can both cross reference. Alli Wells (talk) 16:33, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Possibility to convert this to overview article

I am starting a new section on this, following on from the discussion above. If we want to make this into an overview article then what other types of forest management should we include? I had a look at the list article outline of forestry and there it says: Forest management – comprises the overall administrative, economic, legal, and social aspects of forest regulation

• Analog forestry – a management focus that seeks to establish a tree-dominated ecosystem that is similar in architectural structure and ecological function to the naturally occurring climax and sub-climax vegetation community
• Bamboo cultivation – farming and harvesting bamboo for commercial purposes such as construction.
• Community forestry – combination of forest conservation with rural development and poverty reduction objectives, accomplished through instating a legal framework that favors profitable and sustainable forest management
• Continuous cover forestry
• Ecoforestry – emphasizes practices which strive to protect and restore ecosystems
• Hardwood timber production – process of managing stands of deciduous trees to maximize woody output

• Tree breeding – method of genetically modifying/selecting forest stock for improved growth or vigor characteristics

• Mycoforestry – ecological forest management system implemented to enhance forest ecosystems and plant communities through the introduction of mycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi
• Permaforestry – approach to the wildcrafting and harvesting of the forest biomass that uses cultivation to improve the natural harmonious systems. It is a relationship of interdependence between humans and the natural systems in which the amount of biomass available from the forest increases with the health of its natural systems.
• Plantation forestry – industrial plantations are established to produce a high volume of wood in a short period of time. Some plantations are managed by state forestry authorities (for example, the Forestry Commission in Britain) and others by paper and wood companies (such as Weyerhaeuser, Rayonier and Plum Creek Timber in the United States, Asia Pulp & Paper in Indonesia).
• Short rotation forestry – managing a forest that utilizes fast-growing species as a bio-based energy crop for use in power stations, alone or in combination with other fuels such as coal

• Short rotation coppice (SRC) – focus on species that are able to naturally regenerate through stump sprouts to maximize economic productivity

• Sustainable forest management – emphasizes practices that maintain forest biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, and vitality, while continuing to fulfill relevant ecological, economic and social functions
• Tree farm – a forest or woodland owned privately where timber crop production is a major management goal

Does this help us? So we add all of these as sections under "types" and with excerpts? Or just as a listing. EMsmile (talk) 07:41, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

In addition, these were the types that DA Sonnenfeld mentioned above: Coppicing; Even-aged timber management; Forest farming; Clearcutting.

Which of all these are really types of forest management, apart from sustainable forest management? EMsmile (talk) 07:43, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I now think plantation forestry would be the main counterpart to sustainable foresting practices, and should be excerpted as the main counterpart to them here. Further, a lot of the sustainable forest management article is either unreferenced/poorly referenced, seems to take content directly from the source (i.e. the bullet point lists), or is not actually specific to the sustainable aspects (i.e. some paragraphs seem to belong in Agroforestry, while "By region" could easily function as an overview of forest management practices in general at the end of this article.) After this clean-up, it would be a lot more balanced here.

Further, there is now a proposal to merge many of the aforementioned articles into either ecoforestry (i.e. analog forestry) or agroforestry (i.e. forest farming), which I support. For the articles mentioned in the last comment, Even-aged timber management seems like it could be readily merged here, while Clearcutting probably belongs in deforestation once the dubious content (i.e. "Positive perspectives" section, where next to nothing appears to come from reliable sources) is stripped out.

Coppicing definitely seems like it deserves to stay standalone, but can be excerpted here. I'm not sure whether short rotation coppice is better off there or in one of the energy crop/biomass articles, but neither it nor short rotation forestry seem like they deserve to be standalone.

Hardwood timber production is an obvious merge somewhere - the only real question is any of it can even be verified in the first place. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 20:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)