Forests have long been locations of contestation between people and state bureaucracies, and among the knowledge frameworks of local users, foresters, ecologists, and conservationists. An essential framing of the debate has been between the categories of primary and secondary forest. In this introduction to a collection of papers that address the questions of what basis, in what sense, and for whom primary forest is ‘primary’ and secondary forest is ‘secondary,’ and whether these are useful distinctions, we outline this debate and propose a new conceptual model that departs from the simple binary of primary and secondary forests. Rather, we propose that attention should be given to the nature of the disturbance that may alter forest ecology, the forms of regeneration that follow, and the governance context within which this takes place.

中文翻译：

---

次生热带森林是什么？重新思考森林景观

长期以来，森林一直是人民与国家官僚机构之间​​以及当地用户、林务员、生态学家和保护主义者的知识框架之间争论的场所。辩论的一个重要框架是原生林和次生林的类别。在这篇论文集的介绍中，这些论文解决了什么基础、在什么意义上、对谁来说原生林是“原生”而次生林是“次生”，以及这些是否有用的区别，我们概述了这场辩论并提出了一种新的概念模型，它脱离了原始森林和次生林的简单二元关系。相反，我们建议应该关注可能改变森林生态的干扰的性质、随后的再生形式以及发生这种情况的治理环境。