Patterns of Change across the Forested Landscape

The scope and extent of past natural disturbances and human-derived changes to the forest landscape often provide the historical context for management but are often insufficiently accounted for in forest planning. In particular, static components of many management plans are not easily adapted to unforeseen system dynamics. For example, when the Northwest Forest Plan was designed in 1993, the inherently dynamic nature of the forest ecosystem and landscape was acknowledged, but there was a general lack of scientific information about the ecological processes that would shape forests of the future. The expectation was that both management and natural disturbances would influence change in the forested landscape, but how management would then adapt to these altered conditions was not clear. At the time, climate change was not well understood and was just beginning to be discussed in relation to forests.