**Acknowledgements**

can be the slow variables leading to rigidity traps. In Australia, soil salt increase has led to decreased production, which now resulted in a rigidity trap [61]. In Alaska, regulation and economic cycles also played a central role. The Alaskan timber industry enjoyed 15 years of a policy monopoly until production decreased, the material interest of small contractors was affected, and federal environmental regulations came into place [62]. Both studies highlight the importance of spatial and temporal scales and processes. The influence of economic cycles on land use change goes beyond the scope of this work, nevertheless in the future should be

As mentioned before, tree farms in Chile are very profitable, and even a large subsidy for native plantations and no subsidy for tree farms would not have implied a large change in the land area demanded for native forest in the late 1990s [52, 63, 64]. Furthermore, in Chile, it is more difficult to plant native species than to plant tree farms. This is due to the technical difficulties of planting native species, which include summer drought, lack of affordable seedlings, non-native wild herbivores, lack of lay knowledge, and the fact that most of the research funding is focused in the development of research and management techniques for non-native species [65]. This suggests that tree farms are a very "resilient" land use, due to the economic, political, and technological context. Nevertheless, forest's natural regeneration can be a much more effective way of recovering the forest [66, 67]. Even though it is unlikely that a one-time payment for native forest management and conservation would initiate the reversal of a resilient land use trend—such as tree farms—forest can recover where tree farms are not planted [64]. Several studies show that if a land plot is not planted with three farms, the native forest recovers [64, 66, 67]. Thus the evidence suggests that tree farms are hindering actual forest recovery. These results can have interesting implications for broader questions

Forest transition theory seeks to explain why and when a country switches from forest loss to recovery. The theory initially developed by Mather [4] argues that countries recover their forests when they reach some level of economic development. Mather's explanation has guided much of the academic and policy-making discussion but has also obscured some relevant concepts, such as the difference between forest cover and tree cover. Although afforestation does provide some environmental benefits, tree farms do not necessarily provide the same benefits as native forest [68, 69]. Drawing from ecology, Putz and Romero [68] call for a critical assessment of forest recovery in the Global South. They call for more attention to the structure, function, and composition of forested ecosystems, rather than an oversimplified assessment of forest transition based solely on tree cover [68, 69]. Differentiating between forest cover and tree cover for assessing forest transitions becomes even more critical if trees are used mainly for industrial production, where inputs of energy and matter are inherently different from

Ecological theory combined with political ecology affords more insight on forest transition theory. Mansfield et al. [8] argue that forest transition theories "assume that the experience of the North reflects a general, desirable process that should be encouraged to 'diffuse' to

**3.1. Alternative land use trends? Implications for forest transition theory**

addressed.

254 Land Use - Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future

regarding forest transition theory.

those of a natural system [20, 70–72].

This research is funded by the CONICYT FONDECYT Chile grant number 11150281. I would also like to thank Francisco Abarca for the map elaboration and Tania Manuschevich for her helpful review, as well as the anonymous chapter reviewers and editor.