Biennial IUFRO Landscape Ecology Conference / Conferencia bienal de Ecología de Paisaje de IUFRO

Abstract

The recent Biennial Conference of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Party 8.01.02, entitled, "Sustaining humans and forests in changing landscapes: forest, society and global change" was held in Concepción, Chile from the 2^nd to the 12^th of November, 2012. This Working Party is coordinated by Jiquan Chen (University of Toledo, Ohio, USA) and seeks to promote and facilitate the application of landscape ecology concepts in the policies and practices of forested landscapes worldwide. It also encourages communication and interaction among scientists who have an interest in landscape ecology and forestry. For this purpose, the Working Party has gathered in seven places across the world: Slovenia, the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy, China and two years ago, Portugal. This year, it was the first time that the Working Party gathered further south in the southern hemisphere, and in particular, in Latin America. The region offers new challenges to forest landscape ecology due to its tremendous heterogeneity of ecosystems and diverse socioeconomic conditions. South American forests represent a large fraction of the world's biodiversity and, in turn, are characterized by progressive deforestation and degradation.

During the 2012 Conference, we received diverse types of scientific contributions such as keynote speakers' plenaries, symposia, oral presentations, posters and short manuscripts for publication in an 'ISI' journal. The contributing topics ranged from forest landscape management to studies on spatial patterns and ecological processes including the effects of climate change and landscape planning. These studies were conducted in diverse, contrasting landscapes, from the sub-Antarctic forests in Cape Horn, Chile to the Siberian forests, including landscapes from Brazil to Australia and Turkey.

It is our major interest to promptly divulgate these works through publication in an open-access scientific journal that is widely known in Latin America. With this goal, the Issue 33(3) of the Bosque Journal is dedicated to the publication of the short manuscripts accepted by the conference's scientific committee. The scientific committee was formed by Louis Iverson (Chair, USDA Forest Service, USA), João Azevedo (Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal), Jean Paul Metzger (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Sandra Luque (IRSTEA, France), Ajith Perera (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Canada), Guillermo Martinez Pastur (Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas, Argentina), Damasa Magcale-Macandog (University of the Philippines Los Banos, Philippine) and Jan Boegart (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium). The process of publication was coordinated by Laura Nahuelhual (Universidad Austral de Chile), who is a member of the conference's organizing committee.