Rotational swidden cultivation systems, with fallow periods long enough for the regeneration of secondary forests are capable of maintaining forest cover and plant diversity in a dynamic balance in swidden cultivation landscapes.
By reference to landscape ecology, conservation biology, forest ecology, and ecosystem-based management, this paper sets out requirements for a forest management regime that maintains forest capital intact and for determining a rate of cut that would likely maintain ecosystem structure and function.
"This agreement simultaneously maintains a managed forest landscape, conserves ecological resources and supports the local economy," he said.
To determine how to maintain forests and their functions in dynamic landscapes, it is important to understand how local people value different types of land cover, and how these values relate to observed land use choices and trends.
In the wider landscape, more creative market mechanisms are emerging, such as payment for ecosystem services: power companies with hydroelectric stations are paying farmers and communities to maintain forests and soil upstream in Costa Rica and Kenya, for example.
This type of management has preserved the typical forest landscape by maintaining a continuous forest cover.
While conservation efforts need to focus on maintaining large areas of connected forest, landscape management needs to ensure protection of karsts as point resources for cave-roosting bats.
Forest managers need to select strategies for retaining and regrowing old trees to maintain suitable numbers over time at appropriate configurations in the forest landscape.
A basic idea underlying the proposed characterisation is that forest diversity, which maintains wildlife species diversity, requires the management of the age structure of the forest landscape.
Regardless of how such a classification will look like in detail (number of classes, parameters included in definition of strata, etc)., stratification of the forest landscape to be monitored is key to lower costs and still maintain a high level of precision and accuracy [ 17].
