A Scientific Perspective for Silviculture

Abstract

Silviculture is an extremely application-oriented discipline without a clear scientific profile. A concentration on biological and ecological research, while the economic side of silvicultural operations has largely been ignored, has led to weakened management relevance. This paper develops a management-oriented scientific profile for silviculture that integrates economic, ecologic, and other aspects of procedures for securing sustainability. The paper starts by identifying a scientific object for silviculture, illustrates the role of theory, and develops “silvicultural economics” as one scientific perspective for silviculture. The proposed concept is based on biologically realistic economic modelling (bioeconomics) and the consideration of uncertainty in order to assure sustainability.