Janusz Szmyt

By Janusz Szmyt

For several decades, the attention of societies has been focused on potential environmental changes due to climate change. Although climate change is not a new phenomenon, in the recent two decades, there has been a growing interest of scientists trying to determine scenarios of trends and their potential impact on forest ecosystems and forestry. Despite the uncertainties of climate change and the response of forest ecosystem to change, the forest management must deal with these uncertainties. There is no single prescription on how to manage forest resources under climate change in order to fulfill all demands from society. Various strategies in forest management are developed to counteract the adverse effects of climate change on forests and forestry. The future forest management should implement the following three main strategies: create forests which are resistant to change, promote their greater resilience to change, and enable forests to respond to change. It is expected that the more the structured forest, the higher the adaptive capacity is expected. Experiment focused on the influence of different silvicultural procedures on the structure of Scots pine in Poland is presented. Achieved results indicated that the process of stand structure conversion is a long-term process and different structural elements can be modified to different extents.

Part of the book: Silviculture