What is a Forest?

Forests are usually described as an ecosystem dominated by trees, but is it really that simple? To understand forests from a perspective of disturbance ecology, it is important to remember the many species processes and interactions that take place in a forest ecosystem.

Consider a managed timber farm and a mostly untouched stand. A timber farm will likely have low diversity as compared to the untouched stand, but does that make it any less of a forest? The answer, obviously, is no. A major key to defining forests and their health is to first understand that forests come in all shapes and sizes. For our purposes in this course, consider a forest to be any plant community where major disturbance is relatively infrequent, allowing for long-living plants to develop.

Forest Ecology Basics

It can become a bit of a headache to think about forests from an ecological point of view. Stand composition/structure, natural abiotic/biotic factors, and human interactions combine to create a hard to predict future. Time can further complicate predictions, as disturbance events in the short term may seem random, but can display patterns over long periods of time. This long term pattern of disturbance events is referred to as its natural disturbance regime.

One of the chief concepts in forest disturbance ecology is stand diversity and how it relates to a forest’s stability. Throughout this course we will learn more about how disturbance affects diversity (and vice versa) and how that in turn can make or break stand stability and therefore health.

Health & Management

There are many definitions of forest health: