11 - What did we learn, and where does it leave us? Concluding thoughts

Summary

Summary of the salient points of the book (what did we learn?)

In this chapter we summarize the most important concepts of the text, first by identifying the problems faced by forest health professionals as we have struggled to define a healthy forest and the best way to assess and to monitor it, then we summarize our approach to address these problems followed by the rationale for our approach, and finally we discuss the role of forestry practices to maintain healthy forests. We end the book by looking to the challenges that future forest health professionals will need to meet to maintain the health of the world's forests.

Prior definitions of forest health

There have been many definitions of forest health proposed during the past 30 years. Edmonds, Agee, and Gara discuss some of these in their textbook on forest health (Edmonds et al., 2000). These definitions range from entirely utilitarian to ecological in the extremes (Kolb et al., 1994). Many of them are not quantifiable, are subjective, or attempt to encompass so many complex and interacting ecological processes that they become unworkable. In apparent frustration, Raffa et al. (2009) proposed that the term “forest health” be used “only when describing the extent to which ecosystem processes are functioning within natural historical variability.”