Within this construct, a legally designated вЂњforestвЂќ can actually be devoid of trees, at least temporarily. But from the вЂњland useвЂќ perspective, forests are landholdings that are legally designated as forest, regardless of their current vegetation. From the вЂњland coverвЂќ perspective, forests are viewed as ecosystems or vegetation types supporting unique assemblages of plants and animals. In addition, a fundamental and commonly misunderstood distinction exists between the actual features of land and its legal designation. From different vantage points, forests can be seen as a source of timber products, an ecosystem composed of trees along with myriad forms of biological diversity, a home for indigenous people, a repository for carbon storage, a source of multiple ecosystem services, and as social-ecological systems, or as all of the above (Fig. Widely used forest definitions that perform well for assessing rates of deforestation-as measured by rates of transformation of forest to non-forest land uses-have not proved useful in assessing forest restoration and regeneration.ДЇorests are viewed, defined, assessed, and valued through different lenses. Differentiating among these different forms of tree cover gain poses a far greater challenge than identifying areas where forest cover has been removed. Local forest disturbance and ingrowth that accompany tree harvesting and silvicultural management are also challenging to detect and monitor. New tree cover can take many forms, from spontaneous natural regeneration to single-species plantations of non-native trees. The functional, structural, and compositional properties of new tree cover differ substantially from those of the forest or non-forest ecosystems they replace (Brown and Zarin 2013 Tropek et al. Forest gain, in contrast, is a highly variable, dispersed, and protracted process that is challenging to document and monitor with commonly used forest definitions and technology (Chazdon 2014). In most cases, forest loss is concentrated and abrupt, and can be clearly documented with a sequence of satellite imagery or aerial photos. Forest gain is not the mirror-image opposite of forest loss. Forest definitions provide the conceptual, institutional, legal, and operational basis for the policies and monitoring systems that drive or enable deforestation, forest degradation, reforestation, and forest restoration (van Noordwijk and Minang 2009).ДЇorest concepts and definitions influence how we assess and interpret forest transitions-the change over time in the balance between forest loss and forest gain within a geographic region-where both loss and gain are defined in terms of tree canopy cover. These efforts could fail to achieve their ambitious goals if they are not informed by clear and appropriate concepts and definitions of forests. We live in an era of unprecedented environmental change, motivating equally unprecedented global actions to protect and restore forest ecosystems (Aronson and Alexander 2013). We provide a framework to illustrate how different management objectives drive the relative importance of different aspects of forest state, dynamics, and landscape context.

Purpose-built and contextualized definitions are needed to support policies that successfully protect, sustain, and regrow forests at national and global scales.

New technologies and participatory assessment of forest states and trajectories offer the potential to operationalize such definitions. Implementing and monitoring forest and landscape restoration requires additional approaches to defining and assessing forests that reveal the qualities and trajectories of forest patches in a spatially and temporally dynamic landscape matrix. Policies dealing with a broad range of forest issues are often based on definitions created for the purpose of assessing global forest stocks, which do not distinguish between natural and planted forests or reforests, and which have not proved useful in assessing national and global rates of forest regrowth and restoration. We present a historical overview of forest concepts and definitions, linking these changes with distinct perspectives and management objectives.

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