Sustained timber yield claims, considerations, and tradeoffs for selectively logged forests.

ABSTRACT: What is meant by sustainability depends on what is sustained and at what level. Sustainable forest management, for example, requires maintenance of a variety of values not the least of which is sustained timber yields (STYs). For the 1 Bha of the world's forests subjected to selective or partial logging, failure to maintain yields can be hidden by regulatory requirements and questionable auditing practices such as increasing the number of commercial species with each harvest, reducing the minimum size at which trees can be harvested and accepting logs of lower quality. For assertions of STY to be credible, clarity is needed about all these issues, as well as about the associated ecological and economic tradeoffs. Lack of clarity about sustainability heightens risks of unsubstantiated claim

SUBMITTER: Putz FE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10468026 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature