In a nutshell, this book covers the natural and settlement history of the forests in the deciduous-to-boreal forest transition zone of the Lake States (Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan) of eastern North America, the different types of disturbances that occur there, and how to study disturbances at the stand and landscape scales. Then several case studies from the Great Lakes Region are used to develop important concepts about the dynamic interactions between disturbance and forest size structure and composition. The dynamics of different forest types within this region are compared with each other. Finally, principles on forest response to disturbance are developed that may be generalized to temperate forests around the world. These include the dynamics of conifer–hardwood mosaics, sensitivity of stands and landscape to changing disturbance regimes, and stability at different scales.

Chapter 1 describes the forest setting of the Lake States, and Chapter 2 follows that with basic information on disturbance regimes. Chapter 3 summarizes my experiences on how to sample and analyze stand disturbance history. The techniques presented there should be applicable in most of the world's closed-canopy temperate forests. Chapter 4 summarizes what we know about stand development and successional trajectories in response to disturbance. Chapter 5 jumps to the landscape scale, and shows how to study landscape age structure and composition.