The adoption of a ecosystem services approach could be potentially useful to help delineate the vast number of attributes that define forest ecosystems by looking at the ecological services they provide.

Yours is a tough question as so many attributes define a system. Functional ecosystems however, as one would expect to find under natural conditions, provide a range of services like soil formation, seed and nutrient dispersal, flood regulation, biomass, carbon sequestration and climate regulation in addition to having intellectual, spiritual and cultural value.

I suppose it depends really on the question you want to answer. Maybe that would help focus in on what attributes (of the many!) would be the most relevant to select and measure??

I think, three ones could be,perhaps, one is the interior microclimate with smaller temperature difference all over the year meaning that it is cooler, less windy, more humid, and less radiation in summer and less cold in winter within forests than oustsides; another one is more biomass and carbon stock in forest ecossytem that others; The forest longevity are long for trees and therefore the natural regeneration and turnover is slow.

I 'd like to adds another one - biodiversity preservation/harbor by forest ecosystems. Many testimonies tell us that highest biodiversity including vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, insects, birds, other animals, microbes of above- and below-ground only live on habitats and food provided by forests across the biggest spatial and long temporal scales. Of course, the industrial plantation forest should be an exception, due to their crop plantation mode and its intesnive management as well as agriculture.

I have been working in Shorea robusta forests, where presence of grasses as well as thorny shrubs and undershrubs are indicative of degradation, kindly match this result with yours..

I don't think so, because these are all part and parcel of Shorea forest ecosystem. one can see the good under storey of all these mentioned plants in undegraded well stocked shorea plantations, especially enroute to Deharadun from Haridwar. A good under growth is also an indicative of good soil condition and better nutrient status.

I think appropriate forest condition for chest nut would be temperate moist. This most valuable species in terms of its fruit value. As forest has three function protective, productive and aesthetic that need to balance through silvicultural operation. Generally in natural state nature balance it but may not be fulfill managers objective. From the SFM perspective it need to create environment for maintaining appropriate proportion of different age of desirable species. In most cases in natural forest species composition is changing due to micro climate. In any forest ecosystem it is necessary to maintain the desirable condition for desired benefits that may be through appropriate silvicultural operation.

Kirsten Dale points to the vast number of attributes that define forest ecosystems and suggests that we look to their ecosystem services as measures of their functional health. But functional for whom or for what? To focus on supporting services is to take an ecocentric view, to look successively to regulating, provisioning and cultural services is to take an increasingly anthropocentric one. However, whatever one’s perspective, taking such an approach to condition assessment may be fraught, given the challenges of attributing, quantifying and monitoring many such services even at a site scale. If simple, yet meaningful measures are required then, particular consideration needs to be given to site history, site size, core area, forest edge adjacent to other natural or semi-natural habitats, density of natural and semi-natural habitats within the surrounding landscape, and linkage of open-ground habitats. These attributes may not only be fundamental to a forest’s value for biodiversity but also to its ability to deliver or sustain ecosystem services. The Woodland Trust (2000; attached) has suggested that these features can be combined in four landscape-scale measures: density of ‘old forest’ cover (useful in spatial targeting or prioritising sites); percentage of ‘old forest’ cover that is semi-natural (accepting that restoration may not reflect the forest’s former historic composition); cumulative core area of semi-natural habitats (the overall degree to which semi-natural habitats are fragmented); and area of old growth.

Richard Smithers

I thank you for Woodland biodiversity: Expanding our horizons!

Also subsequently published as: Smithers, R.J. (2000) Woodland biodiversity: expanding our horizons. Landscape Research, 25:3, 386–392.

Richard Smithers

Thanks a lot!

There are some concepts which attempt to assess the health/development of the total ecosystem. Interesting are the thermodynamic concepts of maximum exergy dissipation and of maximum exergy storage.

The ecosystem attributes that best describe a forest's condition would be those that reflect its sustainability (capacity to regenerate and succeed to the next seral stage). Thus, it would seem that reproductive capacity would be important, as others have noted in their answers. In Ontario, Canada, we have looked at some of those probelms, but not so much of the trees of the forest, but of the understorey and early seral stage successional plants in deforested patches. The trees you mention are mast (nuts etc. that provide food for wildlife) (not to be confused with mass fruiting/flowering!) and are presumably dispersed by wildlife. First, to make mast, the trees must flower, be pollinated, and retain the fertilized ovules in seeds/fruits to ripening. I suspect that chetsnut is pollinated by both wind and insects, hazel by wind, and other nuts by whatever mechanism. Thus, the healthy forest must maintian populations of its mutualist propagule dispersers and its pollinators.

Other issues have to do with other mutualisms, such a mycorrhizal fungi, and so on. For mycorrhizal fungi, their appearance and diversity may be a measure of an ecosystem attribute.

With best wishes,

Peter

Peter Kevan

Thanks a lot!

I agree and thank you!