Forest Management

1. Description

Forest management is one of the most fundamental disciplines in forestry. It focuses on the process of formulating forest management regimes with modern scientific theories. Many procedures such as forest inventory and division, planning and decision making, monitoring and evaluation are included for the final objective of sustainable forest management.

This department was established in 1952. The first batch of graduate students was enrolled in 1959. In 1982, this department was authorized as one of the first disciplines to have Master’s and Doctoral programs in China. It was approved as one of the state-level key disciplines in 1989. It was listed into “211 Project” and “Changjiang Scholars Program” in 1996 and 1999 respectively. In 2004, it participated as a major role in establishing the Key Laboratory for Silviculture and Conservation of the Ministry of Education, and became one of the key disciplines of the State Forestry Administration in 2006. It was listed into “985 Innovation Platform” in 2007 and “Double First-Class” in 2017. In 2018, this department built a “Huang Danian” forest management team.

This department has been playing an important leading role in the field of forest management in China since the middle of last century. It obtained great achievements such as the establishment of forest inventory techniques and sustainable management theory in 1950s, the formulation of forest management plans and the application of remote sensing in 1960s, the creation of a national-level forest inventory framework in 1970s and the forestry information management systems in 1980s. In 1990s, It further performed studies on sustainable forest management. At the beginning of 21st century, forestry remote sensing and information technique was added as a new research direction which contributed a lot to the modernization of forest resource management in China.

The department now is the core base for Chinese forest management research, personnel training, as well as academic exchange. Therefore, it plays an important role in forestry modernization in China.

2. Main research directions

1). Sustainable forest management

This research direction focuses on the theory and approach of forestry leap-forward development, forest dynamics, coupling mechanisms of forest structure and functions, forest silvicultural regimes, evaluation methods for forest health management, multi-purpose forest management systems, community forestry, forestry culture, and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Among which, forest silvicultural regimes and FSC hold the leading position in China.

2). Forest growth and yield modeling

This research direction investigates the growth processes of individual tree and forest stands, as well as forest management effects through existing models or creating new ones to support forest management decision-making. Dynamic models include models of individual tree growth, size-class, whole stand, recruitment, mortality, and treatment. Static models include models of site index, stand density , height-diameter, biomass, tree crown, tree volume, and etc.

3). Forest monitoring and evaluation

This research direction focuses on the theories and techniques for forest stand division, forest inventory, and forest monitoring and evaluation. Specifically, it includes forest sampling techniques, plot design techniques, and the construction of forest monitoring and evaluation indicators. This research direction has undertaken the National Key Technology R&D Program and proposed monitoring and evaluation techniques in order to provide technical support for the "Six National Key Forestry Programs".

4). Forestry remote sensing and information techniques

This research direction integrates remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), global positioning system (GPS), as well as management information system (MIS) into the application of forest inventory, monitoring, forest management, and forest planning and evaluation. It focuses on the extraction, processing, analysis, interpretation and application of forest resource and ecological environment information, the construction of quantitative remote sensing models, as well as producing spatial-temporal continuous remote sensing products to support forest sustainable management.

3. Faculty and staff

There are 9 full professors, 5 associate professors and 8 assistant professors in the faculty. The main undergraduate courses of this department include forest management, forest mensuration, forest sampling techniques, forestry remote sensing, forest resources management, forest planning and decision-making. These are all the first forestry courses opened in China. In the past 5 years, 198 Master students and 54 Ph.D students have graduated from this department. 51 government sponsored projects with 25.13 million RMB of research funding and 30 crossing research projects with 5.13 million RMB have been undertaken by this department. 319 research papers have been published, among which 61 are indexed by SCI and EI. Besides, this department also published 5 monographs, obtained copyright of 4 pieces of software, received 5 utility model patents, as well as placed second for the National Science and Technology Progress Award.