The CELOS Management System: a contribution to improved forest management

The CELOS Management System: a contribution to improved forest management

Suriname - 20 January, 2012

The CELOS Management System (CMS) is a system for harvesting tropical rainforests which aims to cause minimal disturbance to the ecosystem while also providing economic return. CMS was developed by the Centre for Agricultural Research in Suriname (CELOS) and the Agricultural University of Wageningen (The Netherlands; nowadays WUR). Starting in the 1960/70s, it was originally developed for Suriname, but has gained international recognition.

In recent decades the interest in and importance of reduced impact logging and sustainable forest management has strongly increased, as well as the interest in CMS, in Suriname and in other Latin American countries. There was a clear need for a synthesis, bringing together a description of the CMS principles, its underlying yield model, its associated silvicultural treatments, as well as a balanced assessment of its long-term effects on the silvicultural and ecological dynamics and biological value of the managed forests, as apparent from the various studies carried out in the experimental plots.

The book “Sustainable Management of Tropical Rainforests: The CELOS Management System” combines the theoretical basis of the system, and the practical results as apparent from extensive and long-term experimental work in forest plots. This ecological, silvicultural and practical knowledge allows evaluation of the CMS in terms of present concepts and policies on tropical forests and tropical forestry, including the important developments in these fields.