Pierre Drapeau114, Sylvie ~a u t h i e r l~~, David F' ar6115, Richard Carignan6, Rene Doucet7, Luc Bouthillier2, and Christian ~e s s i e r l Within Canada, and internationally, an increasing demand that forests be managed to maintain all resources has led to the development of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. There is, however, a lack of understanding, at an operational scale, how to evaluate and compare forest management activities to ensure the sustainability of all resources. For example, nationally, many of the existing indicators are too broad to be used directly at a local scale of forest management; provincially, regulations are often too prescriptive and rigid to allow for adaptive management; and forest certification programs, often based largely on public or stakeholder opinion instead of scientific understanding, may be too local in nature to permit a comparison of operations across a biome. At an operational scale indicators must be relevant to forest activities and ecologically integrated. In order to aid decision-makers in the adaptive management necessary for sustainable forest management, two types of indicators are identified: those that are prescriptive to aid in planning forest management and those that are evaluative to be used in monitoring and suggesting improvements. An integrated approach to developing standards based on an ecosystem management paradigm is outlined for the boreal forest where the variability inherent in natural systems is used to define the limits within which forest management is ecologically sustainable. Sustainability thresholds are thus d e f i by ecosystem response after natural disturbances. For this exercise, standards are proposed for biodiversity, forest productivity via regeneration, soil conservation and aquatic resources. For each of these standards, planning indicators are developed for managing forest conditions while forest values are evaluated by environmental indicators, thus leading to a continuous cycle of improvement. Approaches to developing critical thresholds and corresponding prescriptions are also outlined. In all cases, the scale of evaluation is clearly related to the landscape (or FMU) level while the stand level is used for measurement purposes. In this view the forest should be managed as a whole even though forest interventions are usually undertaken at the stand level.

At the landscape scale, one of the key indicators of sustainable forest management is the age-class distribution of stands, since it provides a coarse synopsis of habitat potential, structural complexity, and stand volume, and it is directly modified by timber extraction and wildfire. To explore the consequences of several landscape-scale boreal forest management strategies on age-class structure in the Mauricie region of Quebec, we used spatially explicit simulation modelling. Our study investigated three different harvesting strategies (the one currently practiced and two different strategies to maintain late seral stands) and interactions between fire and harvesting on stand age-class distribution. We found that the legacy of initial forested age structure and its spatial configuration can pose short-(<50 years) to medium-term (150-300 years) challenges to balancing wood supply and ecological objectives. Also, ongoing disturbance by fire, even at relatively long cycles in relation to historic levels, can further constrain the achievement of both timber and biodiversity goals. For example, when fire was combined with management, harvest shortfalls occurred in all scenarios with a fire cycle of 100 years and most scenarios with a fire cycle of 150 years. Even a fire cycle of 500 years led to a reduction in older forest when its maintenance was not a primary constraint. Our results highlight the need to consider the broad-scale effects of natural disturbance when developing ecosystem management policies and the importance of prioritizing objectives when planning for multiple resource use.Résumé : À l'échelle du paysage, un des indicateurs clés d'un aménagement forestier durable est la distribution des classes d'âges des peuplements étant donné qu'elle fournit un aperçu grossier des habitats potentiels, de la complexité structurale et du volume du peuplement et qu'elle est directement modifiée par le prélèvement de matière ligneuse et les feux de forêt. Nous avons utilisé un modèle de simulation spatialement explicite pour étudier les conséquences de plusieurs stratégies d'aménagement forestier à l'échelle du paysage en forêt boréale sur la structure des classes d'âges dans la région de la Mauricie, au Québec. Nous avons étudié trois stratégies de récolte (celle présentement utilisée dans la pratique et deux autres stratégies visant à maintenir les peuplements de fin de succession) et les interactions entre le feu et la récolte sur la distribution des classes d'âges des peuplements. Nous avons constaté que l'héritage laissé par la structure d'âge initiale de la forêt et sa configuration spatiale peuvent constituer des défis à court (<50 ans) et moyen (150-300 ans) termes pour arriver à concilier l'approvisionnement en bois et les objectifs écologi-ques. De plus, les perturbations dues aux feux, même avec des cycles relativement longs comparativement aux cycles passés peuvent compliquer encore davantage l'atteinte des objectifs de production de bois et de conservation de la biodiversité. Par exemple, lor...

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A great deal of attention is being given in Canada at present to La notion de foresterie cornmunautaire q o i t actuellement beauthe idea of community forest. This is occurring at a time of coup d'attention au Canada. Cela survient au moment oh une attenunprecedented attention to forest management on one hand, and tion sans prkckdent est accord6 B l'arnknagement forestier d'une to community empowerment on the other. We conceive of a compart, et au rkveil socio-kconomique des communautks. La notion munity forest as a tree-dominated ecosystem managed for mulde foresterie communautaire fait rkfkrence aux kcosyst~mes tiple community values and benefits by the community.domines

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