User-Generated Content: What Can the Forest Health Sector Learn?

Forests, as complex socio-ecological systems, present many management challenges. The human dimensions of these systems are rapidly evolving, reflecting growing concern with environmental degradation and facilitated by the Internet and user-generated content (UGC). Such technologies transform human interaction and reshape our self-experience. For forest health, this is an ontological issue: if our presuppositions about the world change, knowledge of that world, and how to manage it, should reflect such changes. This chapter foregrounds these issues and, drawing on a rapid evidence review, provides and overview of the uses and potentials of UGC in relation to forest health. From an ontological perspective, we situate UGC in broader debates about how digital technologies shape the relationship with the environment and ourselves.