title: [Approaches for assessing forest ecosystem health].
abstract: Assessment and indicator system become the key issues in the research on ecosystem health in 21st century. Assessing forest ecosystem health gradually attach much attention because it is an important component of terrestrial ecosystem. The definition, measurement, evaluation and its management had been discussed broadly, and some theories, assessing methods and frameworks had been proposed, which provides a new concept and a serial research approaches for dealing with the crisis of terrestrial ecosystems, even the environment problems in the world. Now, the common operational models for assessing forest ecosystem health do not exist owing to the manifold limitations. This paper discussed forest ecosystem health problem, and brought forward three preconditions for assessing forest ecosystem health: 1) a clear conceptual framework; 2) adequate data sets; 3) proper research and analysis techniques. The issues of three preconditions were discussed, and the possible approaches for the assessing research on forest ecosystem health, e.g., long-term studies and environment monitoring, space-for-time substation studies, e.g., history approaches, economics valuation and others were expariated.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China. chengao24@sina.com
authors.forename: Gao
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Hongbing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Qingli
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Limin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.forename: Zhanqing
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hao
mesh_terms: D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D014197:Trees