What Is Forest Ecology?

Forest ecology is a discipline that studies the interactions and interdependencies between forest organisms and with the forest environment. An important branch of ecology. Research content includes forest environment (climate, hydrology, soil and biological factors), forest biological communities (plants, animals and microorganisms) and forest ecosystems. The purpose is to clarify the structure, function, and the principles of regulation and control of the forest, to provide a theoretical basis for the continuous expansion of forest resources, increase of its biological yield, full use of the forest's multiple effects, and maintenance of the natural ecological balance.

Forest ecology is

1. Tree ecology (forest individual ecology). Mainly study the ecological characteristics, adaptability (resistance), growth and development, morphological and anatomical characteristics of tree species and their relationship with environmental conditions.

Since the 1960s, the study of forest ecology, in addition to the traditional methods of biology, physics, chemistry and its latest achievements,

Social Issues in Forest Ecology

At present, major social issues in the world, such as energy, environment, and resource use, are closely related to forests and all involve forest ecology issues. Therefore, applying the relevant theories, methods, and means of modern natural sciences and social sciences to study the laws of movement of tree species characteristics, population growth and decline, inter-species relations, system structure, material energy flow, and information transmission, and to establish more realistic system models It has become an urgent task for forest ecology to seek accurate predictions of system changes, to propose the design and management plan of the best artificial ecosystem, and to develop marginal branch disciplines.

Forest ecology development issues

The level of China's forest ecology research, research facilities and technical equipment, and scientific research talents are still far from the world's advanced level, and they also face several development problems:

1. Some developed countries in the world have automated and networked ecosystems, especially the more complex forest ecosystems and small watershed systems, in terms of long-term observations and records of data collection and analysis of ecological functions and processes. Only in the ecological station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China has an international level of automation and an ecosystem network center with a real database and analysis capabilities. The ecological positioning station of the State Forestry Administration is lagging and labor-intensive as a whole Time-consuming and difficult to achieve precise, standardized, non-automated collections, and a nameless "network" status;

2. Some countries in the world have a considerable number of first-level long-term ecological observation test stations and more second-level stations, which have basically or basically met the needs of national level monitoring and research. However, after 40 years of development in China, There are about twenty more formal forest ecosystem observing stations, including less than one hundred semi-local or low-level observing stations, which are set up with research topics and ecological engineering projects, which cannot meet the macro research analysis, such as The need for national, large-scale or international global scale research. The level of these existing stations is also uneven, and the investment in the forestry system is very small. It is also difficult to maintain daily minimum observations, let alone enrichment, improvement and quantitative development.

3. Past studies, such as the study of ecosystems and small catchments, have been small-scale studies, at most small and medium-scale. For large-scale studies, it is impossible to conduct actual observations and experiments, or the quality of the data obtained from observations. Very poor, or facing computing power problems. Therefore, for the needs of large-scale research (and this research is becoming more and more important today, global research is even more urgent), how to integrate specific ecosystems or watersheds The application of specific laws and results to regional and larger-scale decision-making is sometimes feasible, but sometimes it is a thousand miles away. The reasonable use of small-scale data in the context of larger and larger spatial and temporal heterogeneity is the current situation. Important technical issues of forest ecology in ecological model scale conversion. In foreign countries, conceptual models, both statistical models, are often used to make up for such problems encountered in physical models, and these are under exploration. In addition, in macro research, how to interpret the ecological functions and processes of forest ecosystems in a larger background of water, heat, gas, other materials and biodiversity, and to solve the forest ecosystem function models well The problem of coupling with the surrounding water, heat, and gas law models in order to make a more reasonable explanation requires cooperative research in forest ecology and soil science, hydrology, and atmospheric science.

In short, the research on forest ecology in China has a long way to go, and we need to make greater efforts and make greater contributions. ^[3]