Abstract:

We believe that the discipline of silviculture needs further guidance from the system sciences. Firstly, because forest is a complex system with interacting between trees and other vegetations, animals and environments, its whole feature is not simply equal to the sum of its different components. It is necessary to get guidance from the system sciences in studying the features of forest system. Secondly, and more importantly, afforestation is a system engineering including forestry, economy, land resources, agriculture, water conservancy, animal husbandry, environment protection, recreation and other fields. To successfully implement such a complex system engineering, guidance from the system sciences is essential. The afforestation practices demonstrated that without guidance of system theory, the efficiency of the forestry production had been influenced, and the further development of silviculture was also restricted to some extent. Therefore, as a discipline of building the forest complex system and dealing with relationships among other relevant systems, silviculture needs to introduce the system sciences to enrich its theoretical basis.

Key words: silviculture, theoretical basis, system sciences