ABSTRACT
In addressing tropical silviculture as a complex adaptive socio-ecological system, it seems important to differentiate between what has been revealed by researchers or recommended by foresters from what is actually happening in the forest. Furthermore, such an analysis should be interdisciplinary, reflecting tight coupling of the mostly biophysical realms of silviculture and ecology with the socio-economic and political realms that have such large impacts on forests and forestry. Such analyses of coupled human and natural systems benefit from inputs from experts representing a wide variety of disciplines and consideration of the full range of driving and responding factors at a wide variety of temporal, spatial and hierarchical scales (Liu et al., 2007). Inputs from local researchers and practitioners are also critical lest important factors be overlooked or misconstrued. As a traditionally trained forest ecologist, North American and sole author of this chapter, I recognize limitations in my understanding of the social, economic and political dimensions of tropical forestry. That said, given the background on ecology of tropical forests provided in Chapter 3, background on complexity science provided in Chapters 1 and 2 and some possible applications to forest management provided in Chapter 14, plus the availability of many excellent reviews of silvicultural systems recommended for application in tropical forests (e.g. Bruenig, 1996; Dawkins and Philip, 1998) and abundant literature on rural sociology and political ecology (e.g. Robbins, 2012), I feel secure in focusing on some of the factors that emerge from beyond forest boundaries but nevertheless confront tropical silviculture. To understand how these factors might influence tropical silviculture, I strive to differentiate between what is complicated (i.e. involves many components) from what is complex (i.e. uncertain and emergent), but the two are often difficult to distinguish.
