Abstract:

The Forestry in China has been converted into the ecological direction, therefore the expectations and requirements for forestry is increasing. Maintaining and improving the forest healthy level, and fully using the multifunctional benefits of forests in long-term, are new requirements for sustainable development and harmonized society. Forest health has been become one synthesized new branch of forest science and technology, and it is increasingly accepted worldwide. The advanced forestry countries in Europe and North America regard forest health as one important issue. The related study and monitoring have been implemented for more than 20 years, thus rich experiences have been accumulated, scientific knowledge have been deepened, many techniques of monitoring and evaluation have developed, and some attempts have been carried out for healthy management of forests. All these can be used as reference for the forest health development in China. In this paper, the development of forest health in Europe and North America has been systematically summarized, including the development course, forest damage types and influencing factors, national and international forest health monitoring programs, monitoring network and monitoring techniques, monitoring indicators, health evaluation and health regulation. Also the development in China has been briefly overviewed. Further, the shortages of current research have been pointed out. Firstly, the current theory and techniques of forest health are to be further perfected, the monitoring of forest environment has not got enough attention, and the services and functions of forests were not enough considered; Secondly, the development of forest health evaluation is lagged than forest health monitoring, the lack of integrated evaluation methods leads to a lower ability of forest health prediction; Thirdly, the techniques to guide forest health management is not well developed, there is no systematical summing-up for forest health regulation, and there is no whole set of regulation techniques until now. Based on the current development of forest health and the new requirements for forestry, it is pointed out that: 1) Forest health should be an integrated evaluation of forest ecosystem structure, forest environment and forest functions, forest health management is the regulation of the interrelation between the three aspects to maintain their harmonization and to improve the forest ecosystem stability and functions; 2) It is very important to strengthen the technical research of forest health monitoring, evaluation and prediction, this will provide a scientific base for proper decision in forest management and environment protection, establishing a forest health monitoring network is the essential and certain requirement of modern forestry; 3) Forest health management is the technical approach for realizing the sustainable multifunctional utilization of forests under global change, the basic research and international exchange and cooperation are urgently required; 4) Forest health has very clear features of trans-sector, inter-discipline and trans-region, it is very necessary to intensify the coordinator role of government and to strengthen the inter-sector cooperation, and to set up a long-term national plan for forest health monitoring, evaluation and regulation.

Key words: forest health, monitoring, evaluation, forest management, forest function, forestry development