These studies represent major investments by research and land management organizations and the ultimate objective is to meet increasing public demands for forests that provide a healthy environment for urban people, a biologically diverse structure and composition for habitat, sustainable yields of forest products and long-term job opportunities. Applied long-term forest ecological experiments greatly enhance the scientific basis for the advancement of sustainable forest management. They also help facilitate the transfer of scientific results into practical applications and to realize a more effective interface between science and policy. This special issue presents concrete example of such experiments from North America, Europe and Asia that were presented at the IUFRO Conference "Applied Forest Ecological Experiments", which was held from 5 to 7 August 2003 in Davos, Switzerland.
