Renewable Resources: Forest
Ecosystems
Choices
B
Original
Which seems the poorest
D
choice?
A
Frontier
C
Today
http://www.cwbiodiesel.com/biodiesel/palm_oil.html
Time Appropriate Questions
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What do forest ecosystems provide?
What is important or valuable?
How do we conserve what is valuable?
What approaches are available for defining
what is important?
• What approaches are available for
conserving?
• Are we kidding ourselves?
Forest Ecosystems Provide
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Fiber - paper and products
Fuel - cooking & heating
Water - quantity and quality (impervious surface)
Nutrient cycling
Ecosystem energetics (food chain)
Air - CO2 uptake, O2 release, pollutant removal
Climate stability (Biotic pumps, Running paper)
Biodiversity/habitat: plant and animal (wildlife)
Medicine and food products
Recreation/mental & social health
Reference: Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2006)
Ecosystem: A Human Construct
• Definition: An ecological system composed of
living organisms (plants, animals, & microbes)
and their nonliving environment.
• Ecosystems are characterized by:
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Structure & function
Complexity
Interaction of the components
Change over time (e.g., disturbances, succession),
“young, mature, old.”
• Today, these functions must be spatially and
temporally coordinated (legacy of land surveys
and ownership).
Ecosystem threats
• Loss of habitat: Land-use change and
irreversible conversion (fragmentation)
(State of Washington land ownership
map)
• Disruption of biogeochemical cycles
(N,C,P) (elg., carbon cycle, fire, Running)
• Invasive or introduced exotic organisms
• Toxins, pollutants, human wastes
• Climate change (Lectures Bauman,
Battisti)
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Preserving or Conserving
Ecosystems: Approaches
Whitebark Pine
Examine three different approaches
• First, we identify specific species we want
in our ecosystem (e.g., wolves, spotted
owl, whitebark pine, etc.).
• Second, we identify a process we want to
maintain (e.g., carbon fixation).
• Third: A more comprehensive or systems
approach (examine 3 ideas).
Distribution & Importance of
Whitebark Pine
Pinus albicaulis
• High elevation pine
• Large seed
• Special relationship with a
bird
• Important for other
animals
• Keystone species in the
Rockies
• Impacted by climate
change & invasive disease
Situation
Approach 1.
Save a species!
Decline of Whitebark Pine
• White pine blister rust:
Cronartium ribicola, is a rust
fungus with two hosts.
– All North American 5needled pines
– Ribes spp. is its alternate
host.
• Mountain pine beetle
– Fire suppression
– Climate change
Manage for Carbon Dioxide Uptake
Monitor
• Whitebark pine is likely to disappear.
• What are our choices?
– Do nothing (its “natural”)
– Remove the Ribes
– Breed for resistance
– Introduce resistant European/Russian
species
– Selection and genetic engineering of the
endophyte.
Experiment
• Goal: Use forest
systems to take up
CO2
• Get credit for this
carbon uptake
• Techniques Used
• Kyoto Protocol:
Canada
• Unable to meet
2. Ensure a function!
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Methods of Study
Difficulties
• Issues of scale (quality of info
vs. extent of info)
• Monitoring
• Unknowns (soil carbon)
Third Approach
Lessons from first 2 approaches
• Hard: Managing single species or process
• Hard: What to measure, at what scale, how
often, etc.
• Expensive: Techniques to measure (e.g.,
what is there now & how is it changing)
• Expensive, boring: Monitoring
• Knowledge: Understanding of interactions
• Policies: Options defined by
• Nature changes: forest fire, competition,
succession.
Three examples
1. National Commission on
Science for Sustainable
Forestry (NCSSF)
2. Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Program (MEA)
3. The Natural Capital Project
Work on maintaining “properly”
functioning ecosystems
Valuing ecosystems
Key: Remember all the functions?
1• Early warning assessment system that is
– Rapid & cost effective
And that is based on
• ‘Stand’ level sustainability (condition):
– Evaluated using indicators of ecosystem
services &
– Matched against benchmarks
• Science based
Does it work?
• Indicators, benchmarks, scale, ok
Ecosystem Goods and Services
Cont.
• Definition of Ecosystem Goods and
Services
• (2) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Program
• (3) The Natural Capital Project
http://www.ncseonline.org/NCSSF/page.cfm?FID=1426
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Older definition of Ecosystem
goods and services
Ecosystem goods: Biophysical elements
that are directly, or indirectly, consumed
by humans
Ecosystem services: processes that
produce, or support the production of,
ecosystem goods (most involve some
biogeochemical cycle).
Newer definition of Ecosystem
goods and services
• Provisional services (e.g., food, fiber, fuelwood,
biochemicals, genetic resources, and water)
• Cultural services (e.g., recreational, ecotourism,
educational, sense of place, cultural heritage, spiritual,
religious and other nonmaterial benefits).
• Supporting services (e.g., primary production, soil
formation & nutrient cycling)
• Regulating services (e.g., water regulation [floods,
irrigation], water purification, climate regulation, land
degradation, and disease regulation)
The release of the MEA assessment was not big news,
even though 60% of the 24 ecosystem services studied
are degrading. Which of the following two factors below
did the article suggest were responsible for the lack of
a strong media reception?
1. That the authors felt their reporting
method was fine
2. That no fixes or solutions were
provided
3. That human involvement was not
evaluated.
4. That the MEA authors left the decisionmaking up to the decision-makers
5. That there were so many thick
technical reports
Example of an Ecosystem Service
• Soil provides the following
ecosystem services
– Significant regulator of the hydrological
cycle
– Shelters seeds, provides medium for
plant growth, provides physical support
– Retains, delivers & derives nutrients
– Significant role in decomposition
– Contributes to cycling, retention &
regulation of major element cycles (N,
P, C, S)
– Carbon storage & cycle
– Role as a purifier (water, nutrients,
etc.)
2 - MEA Conceptual Framework
Global
Regional
Local
Human wellbeing & poverty
reduction
Indirect Drivers of
Change
• Demographic
• Economic
• Sociopolitical
• Science & technology
• Cultural & religious
2 - MEA:
Assessments
& Publications
Direct Drivers of Change
Ecosystem
Services
Life on Earth:
Biodiversity
• Changes in land use & land
cover
• Species removal or
introductions
• Technology
• Climate change
• Natural physical & biological
drivers
• External inputs
December 2005
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3 - Natural Capital Project
2 - Pressures on Goals of MEA
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Population Growth (P)
Economy, consumption (A)
Combined demand on natural resources
Land degradation & conversion
Invasive organisms
Climate change
Public Health (e.g., HIV, malaria, nutrition)
Template for evaluation
Political acceptance & will (and
consistency)
Joint project of
• Nature Conservancy
• World Wildlife Fund
Earth, we have a problem
• The Woods Institute for the
Environment at Stanford University
• Launched 31 October 2006
http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/about.html
3 - Natural Capital Project
Statement
• The Problem: Destroy nature and you lose
human-life support systems
• Their Solution: Ecosystems valued as
precious natural assets
• A world of economic realism!
• Requires new
3 - Natural Capital Project
Details:
• InVEST: Integrated valuation of ecosystem
services and tradeoffs
• Problem definition approach
• Scale
• Economic
• Biophysical
– Scientific methods
– Financial instruments
– Government policies
3 - Natural Capital Project
Critique:
• Natural capital ≠ human capital (back
to the lecture on ethics)
• Just a fancy cost - benefit analysis
• Implementation (e.g., REDD [reducing
emissions for deforestation and
degradation])
• Placing a value on nature
• Alternative: Nature = 0.
Conclusion: Difficulties
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Setting limits and distributing responsibility
Scale & variable (s)
Measurement
Monitoring
Assessment
Regulation
Outcomes and Feedback
Choices
Political will = f (human will)
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/04/the_market_force_of_nature.php
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Whitebark Pine: Ecological Importance
Orphaned Slides
• Perhaps some of the slides have
additional info that might be valuable.
• Hardy subalpine conifer, tolerates poor
soils, steep slopes, windy exposures.
• Often the tree line species
• Keystone species (Rocky Mountain
Region)
– Food source - birds, small mammals & bears
– Often colonizes a site, facilitates succession &
promotes diversity
– Regulates runoff, reduces soil erosion
Picture: C.J. Earle
Does it works in practice
• Mission: to advance the science and
practice of biodiversity conservation and
forest sustainability
• Critical Question: How does an owner or
manager of forest land tell whether
biodiversity and sustainability are being
positively, negatively or neutrally affected by
management practices and decisions?
• Or: Is your land ‘good’, changing, & changing
in what direction?
• Functions, variables and benchmark
levels can be defined
• A sampling scheme has been
designed & tested
• Evaluation is then a comparison of
values and changes in values.
• Subsequent decisions are then based
on goals and objectives set by land
owner.
http://www.ncseonline.org/NCSSF/page.cfm?FID=1426
Does it work?
• Perhaps (actually data from urban to rural
land
• Weakness:
– Assumes that the indicators are correct and
respond in a measurable & timely way
– Assumes that we can react fast enough.
– Does not link objectives over large areas of
land.
• Clearly better than nothing
MEA Goals
• Identify options that can better achieve core human
development and sustainability goals.
– Recognize & meet growing demands for food, clean water,
health, and employment.
– Balance economic growth and social development with
environmental conservation.
• Better understand trade-offs involved—across
stakeholders—in decisions concerning the
environment.
• Rather than issue by issue, use a multi-sectoral
approach
• Match response options with appropriate level of
governance
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Well-Being Defined (MEA)
•Security: Ability to
– a. live in an environmentally clean and safe shelter
– b. reduce vulnerability to ecological shocks & stress.
•Basic material for a good life: Ability to access resources
to earn income and gain a livelihood
•Health: Clean water, air, adequate nourishment, adequate
energy for temperature regulation, good health
•Good social relations
•Freedom & Choice
Yangjuan Village
• Apparently intensive use of the land
• Is the use sustainable? And how does land
use reflect and affect the inhabitants?
• Idea of eco-political tsunamis
Yangjuan Land use
Traditional Buckwheat
Firewood
Livestock
Conversion from local land race
of corn to new hybrid corn
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