ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the implications of the changes for wood and forest social-ecological systems. In forest management discourse there are tensions within and between the older regimes of stewardship forestry and emerging wood cultivation and extensive forest ecosystem management approaches about optimal forest management approaches. The global transition of wood production from natural forest extraction to wood cultivation and a shift of natural forest management away from wood extraction is land sparing writ large. Wood extraction might continue to attract interest as a viable source of income to help pay for management, although where strict environmental regulations are in place wood production is still likely to struggle to pay the costs of managing a forest. While wood production might become more focused geographically, its emergence into agricultural and other heavily modified landscapes will require new thinking about how wood production integrates within these landscapes.
