Forecasting forest futures

s:2380:"`At last, a book that is well-written, and carefully and clearly thought out about how to think about and make useful, scientifically sound forecasts about forestry. More than that, it will be of immense help in conservation and management of all living resources, because it has the clarity of thought and depth of understanding needed and sorely lacking in the past. A "must read" for those involved in natural resource management and conservation.' Dan Botkin, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA `A grand tour of issues and insights, approaches and applications in forest modelling based on three decades of experience with the FORECAST family of models, and offering a well-reasoned rationale for better models, and better use of models.' Jerry Vanclay, Southern Cross University, Australia `Providing a comprehensive review of forest models, their history and underlying ideas and concepts, this book is fascinating and thought-provoking reading which should not be missed by anyone engaged in model building and model application to forest management.' Annikki Makela, University of Helsinki, Finland Modelling is an important tool for understanding the complexity of forest ecosystems and the variety of interactions of ecosystem components, processes and values. This book describes the hybrid approach to modelling forest ecosystems and their possible response to natural and management-induced disturbance. The book describes the FORECAST family of ecosystem management models at three different spatial scales (tree, stand and landscape), and compares them with alternative models at these three scales The book will help forest managers to understand what to expect from ecosystem-based forest models. It will also serve as a tool for use in teaching about sustainability, scenario analysis and value trade-offs in natural resources management, and assist policy makers, managers and researchers working in assessment of sustainable forest and ecosystem management. Several real-life examples of using the FORECAST family of models in forest management and other applications are presented from countries including Canada, China, Spain and the USA, to illustrate the concepts described in the text. The book also demonstrates how these models can be extended for scenario and value trade-off analysis through visualization and educational or management games";