 | |
Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 Future challenges
Human resources for research
Despite the establishment of Ensis, research capacity in forestry and forest products in
coming decades may be constrained not least by significant reductions in the staff numbers of
traditional research providers, an increased emphasis on short-term projects, and the diversion
of staff from research projects to monitoring and consultancies. Many of the skilled personnel
who have been ‘downsized’ have remained on call in the workforce as contractors or
consultants, but their former contributions to institutional memories and the mentoring of
younger colleagues are being lost, and their effectiveness is inevitably being eroded by
increasing age and isolation. Future research capacity is also threatened by a marked down-turn in undergraduate
numbers (Kanowski, 2006) a problem in many countries (described in
Chapter 5). Although contemporary forestry problems may often be best addressed by teams
including specialists from other disciplines, the consequent broadening of the potential pool of
talent may be insufficient to meet national needs at a time both of expansion of the forest
industry and of threats to it.
Some topics for research are described briefl y below.
New horizons for plantations
In Australia, the large area of maturing eucalypt plantations established in the last decade for
fibre production presents a significant challenge for harvesting and marketing, as well as an
opportunity to establish important processing capacity in Australia. The ability to grow
commercially-successful plantations in the seasonally-dry tropics of northern Australia, and in
low-rainfall areas in southern Australia (e.g. some areas now used for wheat) would be
valuable: in the first case, to expand and diversify regional economies (Underwood, 2006), and
in the second to ameliorate land degradation resulting from salinisation (Maslin and McDonald
2004).
The hardwood dilemma
Australia and NZ have been very successful in developing timber industries based on softwood
plantations, and more recently short-rotation hardwoods for fibre. However, research is still
needed into the technical, economic and commercial challenges of establishing durable
hardwoods from Australian native forests in plantations (Kile, 2005)
Forest protection and sustainability
Both native forests and plantations may be threatened by pests, diseases, weeds, droughts
and fires. Sustaining productivity will require ongoing research in stand management, nutrition
and genetics.
Water and climate change
Climate change is expected to have a profound effect on Australasian forests and on the
research necessary to maintain them. In Australia, it is expected that an already very variable
climate will become even more erratic, and that there will be more prolonged droughts and
higher temperatures over extensive areas. These changes will certainly affect forest growth,
and are likely to increase vulnerability to pests and diseases, and particularly fires. In some
regions of southern Australia droughts and fires have already
significantly damaged the forest estate. The infl uence of forests on the quality and quantity of
water yield from catchments has come to public attention as most cities in Australia face
significant water shortages. Competition for water is increasing (see for example Clifton et al.
2006, and Nambiar and Ferguson 2005) and research on forested catchments is urgently
required into management practices to maintain or increase water yield.
| 
