Well-designed, robust partnerships are important for addressing forest resource problems that intersect diverse ownerships, management, and research expertise. Here, we describe a case study of a research–management partnership. First, we describe the rationale and design of a large-scale, long-term experiment focused on increasing the sustainability and resilience of managed northern hardwoods. With the experiment as context, we next discuss details of the partnership contributing to its success, as well as some challenges. The experiment is a Michigan-wide evaluation of silvicultural alternatives to the current paradigm of selection silviculture. Our goal is to identify combinations of silvicultural treatments that increase the diversity and density of sapling recruits over forested landscapes where deer-browsing pressure and other limiting factors are at play. Pretreatment data from our 140-site study bolstered justification for the research, with sapling and pole classes generally lacking adequate stocking and diversity of desirable species over large geographic extents. We anticipate that the wildlife and forestry research–management model used to develop this project will be useful for other rapidly developing challenges that cannot wait decades to be addressed without potentially catastrophic losses to forest function. Key beneficial elements of our partnership include: (1) sensitivity to information needs at all management levels (i.e., policy to practice), (2) capitalizing on differences in strengths and reward systems of managers and scientists, (3) structured, frequent scientist–manager meetings to maintain focus on research and management application outcomes, (4) long-term relations and support that build trust, and (5) explicit wildlife and forestry collaboration on problems requiring joint expertise. Challenges to our partnership generally revolved around communication, workload, and implementation issues, and were partially alleviated by planning.

中文翻译：

---

通过造林系统研究重新思考北方硬木森林管理范式：研究与管理伙伴关系确保相关性和应用

设计良好，稳健的伙伴关系对于解决与各种所有权，管理和研究专长相交的森林资源问题至关重要。在这里，我们描述了研究与管理伙伴关系的案例研究。首先，我们描述了一项大型长期实验的原理和设计，该实验的重点是提高北方管理硬木的可持续性和复原力。在实验的背景下，我们接下来讨论伙伴关系对成功的贡献以及面临的挑战的细节。该实验是密歇根州范围内对选择育林模式的替代方法的评估。我们的目标是确定森林养护措施的组合，这些组合可以增加森林景观中鹿苗压力和其他限制因素在起作用的树苗新兵的多样性和密度。来自我们140个站点​​的研究的预处理数据为该研究提供了依据，树苗和极类通常在很大的地理范围内缺乏足够的种群和所需种类的多样性。我们预计，用于开发该项目的野生动植物和林业研究与管理模型将对其他迅速发展的挑战很有用，这些挑战迫不及待要解决数十年，而又不会对森林功能造成潜在的灾难性损失。我们合作伙伴关系的主要优势包括：（1）在所有管理级别上对信息需求的敏感性（即实践政策），（2）利用管理人员和科学家的长处和奖励制度上的差异，（3）举行有组织的，频繁的科学家-经理人会议，以专注于研究和管理应用成果，（4）建立信任的长期关系和支持，以及（5）在需要联合专业知识的问题上进行明确的野生动植物和林业合作。我们合作关系的挑战通常围绕沟通，工作量和实施问题，并且通过计划得以部分缓解。