Forest ecosystems have come to be seen as one of the most important components of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital field of science, applied art, and technology.
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Forest ecosystems have come to be seen as one of the most important components of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital field of science, applied art, and technology.
Activities
Traditionally, professional foresters develop and implement "forest management plans". These plans rely on tree inventories showing an area's topographical features as well as its distribution of trees (by species) and other plant cover. They also include roads, culverts, proximity to human habitation, hydrological conditions, and soil reports ecological sensitive areas. Finally, forest management plans include the projected use of the land and a timetable for that use.
Plans for harvest and subsequent site treatment are influenced by the objectives of the land's owner or leaseholder (for instance, a timber company that holds cutting rights to a given tract of land, or the government in the case of state-owned forests). There is an increasing trend to consider the needs of other stakeholders (e.g., nearby communities or neighborhoods, or rural residents living within or adjacent to the forest tract). Plans are developed with the prevailing forest harvest laws and regulations in mind. They ultimately result in a prescription for the harvest of trees, and indicate whether road building or other forest engineering operations are required.
Traditional forest management plans are chiefly aimed at providing logs as raw material for timber, veneer, plywood, paper, wood fuel or other industries. Hence, considerations of product quality and quantity, employment, and profit have been of central, though not always exclusive, importance.
Foresters also frequently develop post-harvest site plans. These may call for reforestation (tree planting by species), weed control, fertilization, or the spacing of young trees (thinning of trees that are crowding one another).
While other duties of foresters may include preventing and combatting insect infestation, disease, forest and grassland fires, there is an increasing movement towards allowing these natural aspects of forest ecosystems to run their course, where possible, usually excepting epidemics or risk of life or property. Foresters are specialists in measuring and modelling the growth of forests (forest mensuration). Increasingly, foresters may be involved in wildlife conservation planning and watershed protection.
History
The use and management of forest resources has a long history in China, dating from the Han Dynasty and taking place under the landowning gentry. It was also later written of by the Ming Dynasty Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi (1562-1633). In the Western world, formal forestry practices developed during the Middle Ages, when land was largely under the control of kings and barons. Control of the land included hunting rights, and though peasants in many places were permitted to gather firewood and building timber and to graze animals, hunting rights were retained by the members of the nobility. Systematic management of forests for a sustainable yield of timber is said to have begun in the 16th century in both the German states and Japan. Typically, a forest was divided into specific sections and mapped; the harvest of timber was planned with an eye to regeneration.
