The moist coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest of North America have provided human populations with highly valued ecosystem services for millennia. With the changes that continue to take place across these forested landscapes, there is rising concern about how valued services will be maintained. Owners and users of forested lands place different values on different ecosystem services. Attempts by federal and state forest managers to accommodate differing goals have produced fixed boundaries around different management regimes. Fixed boundaries delimiting forests areas managed for different objectives may not provide sustainability for the larger landscape and the ecosystem services it provides. Today's landscape is mostly bifurcated into patches of frequent harvest and patches managed for old-growth forest characteristics. Valued ecosystem services have been damaged by this fragmentation. Can we envision a better way to manage these forests to produce a sustainable variety of ecosystem services?
Results/Conclusions
The future for these forests will include a changing climate and all its effects on stream flows and temperatures, soil moisture, wildfire occurrence, plant and animal ranges, and tree mortality. It will also almost certainly include an increasing wildland-urban interface, with more people expanding urban boundaries and populating rural landscapes, along with an increase in permanent roads to accommodate an expanding human population. The inherently dynamic nature of these forests is such that they must experience disturbance to maintain important ecological components and functions and array of goods and services, adding to the management challenge. Respectful collaboration across organizations and boundaries that acknowledges different goals and values could foster the research, adaptive management, humility, and trust trust-building that will be necessary to build a more sustainable future.