Managing Landscapes for Change
Managing Landscapes for Change

Author: Robert M. Scheller

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-11-27

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 3030620417

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This book discusses how future landscapes will be shaped by pervasive change and where, when, and how society should manage landscapes for change. Readers will learn about the major anthropogenic drivers of landscape change, including climate change and human induced disturbance regimes, and the unique consequences that multiple and simultaneously occurring change agents can have on landscapes. The author uses landscape trajectories as a guide to selecting the appropriate course of action, and considers how landscape position, inertia, and direction will determine landscape futures. The author introduces the concept of landscapes as socio-technical-ecological systems (STES), which combines ecological and technological influences on future landscape change and the need for society to acknowledge both when considering landscape management. Thinking beyond solutions, the author identifies barriers to managing landscapes for change including the cost, cultural identity of local populations, and the fear of taking action under uncertain conditions. Nevertheless, processes, tools, and technologies exist for overcoming social and ecological barriers to managing landscapes for change, and continued investment in social and scientific infrastructure holds out hope for maintaining our landscape values even as we enter an era of unprecedented change and disruption.

Ecosystem Management for Parks and Wilderness
Ecosystem Management for Parks and Wilderness

Author: James K. Agee

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780295968179

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The need for cooperation among government agencies as well as an interdisciplinary approach to the increasingly challenging and complicated problem of managing park and wilderness areas prompted the University of Washington College of Forest Resources, the National Park Service, and the Forest Service to sponsor an ecosystem management workshop for scientists, planners, and managers. To develop an improved conceptual approach to managing change in ecosystems crossing natural and political boundaries, the workshop focused on defining terms, uncovering areas of misunderstanding and barriers to cooperation, and developing methods to determine the most important problems and issues. Three needs emerged from the prioritization process: a precise definition of the management objectives for park and wilderness lands and how to integrate them with objectives for surrounding lands, nationally as well as site-specific; more information about physical, biological, and social components of park and wilderness ecosystems from both sides of political boundaries; and key indicators of ecosystem condition as well as methods for evaluating management effectiveness. All of these common themes point to a need for more precise direction in management goal setting and more accurate assessment of progress toward goals. The book includes an introductory chapter by the editors and summary in which they outline a direction for ecosystem management in the next critical decades. The other chapters by individual contributors include studies on laws governing park and wilderness lands, paleoecological records that reveal the historic effects of climatic variations on vegetation change, succession and natural disturbance in relation to the problems of what can and should be preserved, managing ecosystems for large populations of vertebrates, the management of large carnivores, effects of air pollution, lake acidification, human ecology and environmental management, the role of economics, cooperation in ecosystem management, and management challenges in Yellowstone National Park.

Landscapes of Minnesota
Landscapes of Minnesota

Author: John Fraser Hart

Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780873515917

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Have you ever wondered why Minnesota's forests grow in the north and not in the West? Why gaming casinos are prospering? Why producers raise chickens instead of cows? Why some towns grow while others fail? Minnesota's natural wonders have had an effect on and been changed by the people who call this complex mosaic of lakes and forests, rivers and fields home. Through engaging, in-depth text and copious illustrations, John Fraser Hart and Susy Svatek Ziegler explore the human and environmental characteristics that define the state in Landscapes of Minnesota. Illustrated with hundreds of maps and color photographs that reveal the changing character of Minnesota, this stunning geography traces the development of the state's natural environment, how the land formations, plants, and animals became a part of its fabric, and how they have changed over time. Focusing on small towns, the authors document patterns of growth and decline, offering striking commentary on these once-key bastions of Minnesota-ness. Turning to the Twin Cities, they analyze the expanding urban arc and the surprising growth of a baby boomer retirement belt. Landscapes of Minnesota explores how the lives and livelihoods of Minnesotans have affected what the state has become and what it will one day be. John Fraser Hart is a professor of geography at the University of Minnesota and a Guggenheim Fellow. Susy Svatek Ziegler is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota and a Fulbright Scholar.

Emulating Natural Forest Landscape Disturbances
Emulating Natural Forest Landscape Disturbances

Author: Ajith H. Perera

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0231129173

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This comprehensive collection of provocative papers provides a scientific foundation for justifying the use of and a solid framework for examining the ambiguities inherent in emulating natural forest landscape disturbance. Contributors range from policymakers and forestry professionals to academics and conservationists, offering a balanced view of the promises and challenges of the forest management paradigm in sustaining forest landscapes. The book opens with an overview of foundational concepts, a detailed discussion of emerging forest management paradigms and their global context, and an examination of the ecological premise for emulating natural disturbance. This section also explores the current understanding of natural disturbance regimes, including the two most prevalent in North America: fire and insects. The volume then uses several geographically diverse case studies to address the characterization of natural disturbances and the development of applied templates for their emulation through forest management. The emphasis on fire regimes reflects the greater focus that has traditionally been placed on understanding and managing fire, compared with other forms of disturbance, and utilizes several viewpoints to address the lessons learned from historical disturbance patterns. Reflecting current developments in the field, immediate challenges, and potential directions, this collection concludes with a penetrating look at practical applications, exploring the expectations for and feasibility of emulating natural disturbance through forest management.

The Art of Managing Longleaf
The Art of Managing Longleaf

Author: Leon Neel

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0820344133

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Greenwood Plantation in the Red Hills region of southwest Georgia includes a rare one-thousand-acre stand of old-growth longleaf pine woodlands, a remnant of an ecosystem that once covered close to ninety million acres across the Southeast. The Art of Managing Longleaf documents the sometimes controversial management system that not only has protected Greenwood's “Big Woods” but also has been practiced on a substantial acreage of the remnant longleaf pine woodlands in the Red Hills and other parts of the Coastal Plain. Often described as an art informed by science, the Stoddard-Neel Approach combines frequent prescribed burning, highly selective logging, a commitment to a particular woodland aesthetic, intimate knowledge of the ecosystem and its processes, and other strategies to manage the longleaf pine ecosystem in a sustainable way. The namesakes of this method are Herbert Stoddard (who developed it) and his colleague and successor, Leon Neel (who has refined it). In addition to presenting a detailed, illustrated outline of the Stoddard-Neel Approach, the book—based on an extensive oral history project undertaken by Paul S. Sutter and Albert G. Way, with Neel as its major subject—discusses Neel's deep familial and cultural roots in the Red Hills; his years of work with Stoddard; and the formation and early years of the Tall Timbers Research Station, which Stoddard and Neel helped found in the pinelands near Tallahassee, Florida, in 1958. In their introduction, environmental historians Sutter and Way provide an overview of the longleaf ecosystem's natural and human history, and in his afterword, forest ecologist Jerry F. Franklin affirms the value of the Stoddard-Neel Approach.