Emerging issues in forest science

Autorzy

• Don K. Lee Seoul National University, Department of Forest Sciences
  Seoul 151-921, Republic of Korea
• Niels E. Koch University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Life Sciences
  Rolighedsvej 23, DK-1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark
  phone: +45 353 31515, fax: +45 3533 1508
  e-mail: nek@life.ku.dk
• John Innes University of British Columbia, Faculty of Forestry
  2424 Main Mall Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4
• Peter Mayer Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape
  Seckendorff-Gudent-Weg 8, A-1131 Vienna, Austria

Abstract

Major issues in forest science, such as climate change, bio-energy, biodiversity, and water, were assessed by IUFRO responsive to the broader scientific and policy communities to tackle more complex global environmental, social, and economic issues impacting forests. Other issues highlighted in this paper are forest health and forest genetics; forest modeling and operations engineering; challenges for mitigation and adaptation; public participation on decisions, research, and distribution of benefits; estimating ecosystem services, biofuels and biodiversity; societal issues, including health, food, poverty, urbanization, and lifestyle; educational change in structure and topics; and information and research administration. As forest science faced various challenges in the last few years, there is a need for interdisciplinary approaches and cross-sectoral collaboration. These interrelated and emerging key-issues, particularly climate change, biodiversity, bio-energy and water, are of strong interest to policy makers and groups inside and outside the forest sector. These will all be of high relevance to forest science and to IUFRO in the coming years, primarily for global collaboration.

Keywords

• IUFRO
• forest products
• water resources
• biodiversity
• climate change