Second Announcement and Call for Papers: Sustainable Forest Management with Fast-Growing Plantations
We are pleased to be able to send you a notification and call for abstracts of papers or posters for a forthcoming meeting organized by our colleagues at North Carolina State University and the USDA Forest Service. The conference website is www.ncsu.edu/feop/iufro_plantations.
Research into the intensive management of fast growing plantations has demonstrated impressive opportunities to improve the productivity and profitability of forest management at the stand level and supplant harvests of natural forests. In several places around the globe, including the U.S. South, this enhanced productivity has transformed forestry. Intensive management and forest biotechnology generate higher yields and moderate timber price increases. However, such gains may adversely affect long-term sustainability, biodiversity, and traditional local employment. Aggregate timber supply increases may suppress prices, decreasing investment returns so that forest land is lost to other uses.This conference will examine these relative merits of forest plantations. It will focus on biological, economics, planning, and management components of plantation productivity gains and how the intensification of management is applied in practice. The U.S. South, with 21% of its forests under plantation management, provides an excellent site for exploring this set of issues.
The conference will be held in scenic Charleston, South Carolina in the heart of the southern forest plantation area. Information on Charleston can be found at www.charlestoncvb.com, and information for the Charleston Doubletree conference center is available at www.charlestondoubletree.com
The meeting will be offered simultaneously with the Southern Forest Mensurationists Meeting, including an all day joint field trip to nearby forest industry lands and a leading forest biotechnology research center.
The conference will be organized around the following four topic areas:
1. Forest sector analysis / economic drivers and implications of intensive
management
2. Biophysical analysis of intensive management options
3. Biological and environmental consequences of intensive management
4. Social issues surrounding the management of plantations
Information about the conference may be obtained from:
Chris Goulding, Ensis, New Zealand, Chris.Goulding@ensisjv.com
Fred Cubbage, Professor, North Carolina State University, USA, fred_cubbage@ncsu.edu
Dave Wear, Project Leader, USDA Forest Service, USA, dwear@fs.fed.us
The call for papers is available at: www.ncsu.edu/feop/iufro_plantations. Abstracts for papers and posters should be submitted in the described format by April 30 to:
Susan Moore, Forestry & Environmental Outreach Program, North Carolina State University, susan_moore@ncsu.edu, www.ncsu.edu/feop
