Background
Forests in the Northeast Asian region are unique because
of their diverse ecosystems and high biodiversity, and
those ecosystems have not only stood at its dignity as
itself but also provided essential and valuable services
to human beings. Those forest ecosystems, however, has
been under enormous pressure of deforestation and forest
degradation, induced by both natural factors (i.e., climate
change, fire, flood and drought) and anthropogenic factors
(i.e., illegal logging, livestock farming, land conversion
for agriculture and over exploitation). Those deforestation
and forest degradation have resulted in both environmental
damages of soil erosion, land degradation and biodiversity
loss and socio-economic damages of insecure food, water
and health, as well as the loss of cultural identity/dignity
to the people. In order to mitigate and combat those emerging
challenges, various levels of communities (i.e. community,
domestic, regional and international) among various stakeholders
(i.e. community leading group, university, research institute,
government agency and international organizations) have
been proceeded significant efforts for last decades.
In particular, together with international research communities,
research group in forest science in the Northeast Asian
region has contributed through conducting relatively large
scale of plot-based integrated research investigating
long-term responses of forest ecosystem to natural and
human disturbances and environmental changes over broad
spatial and temporal scales.
Those forest ecosystem research results have been useful
in providing important information for forest structure
and species composition as well as ethnobotanical data,
understanding of species habitat requirements, and providing
quantitative data for testing theories and hypothesis
in population and community ecology. Moreover, the long-term
data obtained by these forest ecosystem researches over
last few decades has enabled the researchers to evaluate
the nature and pace of ecological change, to interpret
its effects, and to forecast the range of future biological
responses to the changes through establishing relevant
mid- and long-term plans in forest conservation, restoration
and management, which had been unable to do only through
short-term observations or experiments.
This workshop, co-organized by National University of
Mongolia and the IUFRO Working Party 1.01.13 and sponsored
by Asia Pacific Association of Forestry Research Institutions
(APAFRI) and National Institute of Forest Science (NIFoS)
of the Republic of Korea, aimed mainly at sharing knowledge
and research experiences on Long-term Forest Research
(LTFR) in the Northeast Asian region (i.e. Mongolia, Russia
and Korea). As one of the series of annual workshop followed
by the years of 2015 (Yanji, China), 2016 (Harbin, China),
and 2017 (Sapporo, Japan), the 2018 workshop this year
aimed at discussing lessons learnt and challenges while
conducting the LTFR researches and future cooperation
among Northeast Asian countries as well as occurred in
the practical field excursion in the Northern Mongolia.
Objectives
The objectives of this workshop were:
