3.2. Forest Systems (Anand)
It has been suggested that forests are complex adaptive systems. They can
show several features of complexity, such as self-organization, connectedness and
resilience to small-scale disturbances. Simple models have been constructed to display
complex forest dynamics and patterns such as power-law scaling of spatial patterns, a
hallmark of self-organized criticality (Anand et al. 2010). What happens to these systems
when humans intervene in the form of land-use changes (Figure 2)? Humans have the
ability to both increase (via afforestation) and decrease (deforestation) various aspects
of forests including biomass (and hence carbon sequestration) and diversity.
The dominant paradigm is for humans to break down the complex adaptive
nature of forests via deforestation, resulting in overall forest loss. But this human land-
use system is neither complex nor adaptive, until there is feedback from this forest loss
on human behavior. Humans also have the ability to reforest. Often times, this is only
done to comply to some legislation. But this would only be a change to the human
system informed by the forest system, not a true feedback. Humans however typically
respond to deforestation by increasing agricultural yield. Ultimately, this decreases the
need to deforest and thus these lands are eventually returned to forest. Thus, the return
to forests is the result of human activities, but not necessarily deliberate (it’s a true
feedback), creating a complex human-environment adaptive system.
Figure 2. Endangered Atlantic forest in southern Brazil within a matrix of natural grassland. Both
of these ecosystems are important to humans for sustainability, one for mainly economic value
and the other for mainly ecosystem services, but we have little understanding of how to predict or
manage the unique land-use dilemmas around this, particularly in the face of diverse global
ecological changes (climate change, invasive species, etc.). Credit: M. Anand, Canada Research
Chair in Global Ecological Change.