The foundation of landscape management is knowledge:

• knowledge of forest conditions
• knowledge of forest dynamics and forest response to disturbance
• knowledge of scientific management processes that avoid or minimize unintended consequences and inefficiencies
• knowledge of modern computing and information technologies that efficiently synthesize and manage the ever-growing information resources on forests.

The landscape approach to ecosystem management provides multiple forest values by maintaining a range of forest structures across the landscape and through time.

Landscape management attempts to maintain all forest structures within the landscape by mimicking, avoiding, and recovering from natural disturbances as the forest changes through natural population processes. In the process other forest values, such as the values outlined by the Montreal Process Working Group described above, can be maintained as well.

Several silvicultural pathways are developed for each stand within a landscape. Technical tools such as the Landscape Management System (LMS) allow the resource manager to test various combinations of these pathways as different management options for the landscape to determine how they provide different mixes of forest values.

Intensive plantations and reserves have been proposed as an alternative means for providing the range of forest values. Including these approaches within the context of the landscape management approach could help maintain particular types of stand structures on the landscape.

As an example, in the forests of the Pacific Northwestern USA landscape management would primarily focus on shifting stands out of the overabundant dense forest structure and into other less abundant forest structures such as the savanna and complex structures through a variety of silvicultural pathways such as thinning and mixed species stands. This would lower the risk of wind and insect damage as well as catastrophic fires, increase production of high-quality wood and wood products, improve carbon sequestration rates, and develop greater recreational opportunities.