1. Renewable Resources: Forest Ecosystems
Original
Today
Frontier

2. Which seems the poorest choice?
Choices D
Which seems the poorest choice? B A C

3. Time Appropriate Questions
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?

4. Forest ecosystems: Goods & Services
Fiber - paper and products
Fuel - cooking & heating
Water - quantity and quality
Nutrient cycling
Ecosystem energetics (food chain)
Air - CO2 uptake, O2 release, pollutant removal
Climate stability
Biodiversity/habitat: plant and animal (wildlife)
Medicine and food products
Recreation/mental & social health
Reference: Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2006)

5. Ecosystem: A Human Construct
Definition: An ecological system composed of living organisms (plants, animals, & microbes) and their nonliving environment.
Ecosystems are characterized by:
Structure & function
Complexity
Interaction of the components
Change over time (e.g., disturbances), “young, mature, old.”
Today, these functions must be spatially and temporally coordinated.

6. Ecosystem threats?
Loss of habitat: Land-use change and irreversible conversion (fragmentation)
Disruption of biogeochemical cycles (N,C,P)
Invasive or introduced exotic organisms
Toxins, pollutants, human wastes
Climate change

7. Ensuring Ecosystem Goods & Services: Approaches
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.
Two examples that use this third approach
NCSSF - small scale, small perspective
MEA - small to large scale, many perspectives

8. Whitebark Pine
Approach 1. Save a species!

9. Distribution & Importance of Whitebark Pine
High elevation pine
Large seed
Special relationship with a bird
Important for other animals
Keystone species in the Rockies
Pinus albicaulis

10. Whitebark Pine: Ecological Importance
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

11. Decline of Whitebark Pine
White pine blister rust: Cronartium ribicola, is a rust fungus with two hosts.
All North American 5- needled pines
In addition, it infects all species of the genus Ribes spp., its alternate host.
European & Russian species resistant
Problems today
Fire suppression
Global climate change
Mountain pine beetle

12. Situation 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.
2. Ensure a function!

13. Manage for Carbon Dioxide Uptake
Monitor
Experiment
Two goals:
• Understand where the hidden sink for carbon dioxide is?
• Use forest systems to take up CO2.
Approach taken by Canada - Kyoto Protocol

14. Methods of Study Difficulties
• Issues of scale (quality of info vs. extent of info)
• Monitoring
• Unknowns (soil carbon)
• Searchinger, T. et al Science Express
• Fargione, J. et al Sci. Express

15. Lessons from first 2 approaches
Managing single components or processes: Hard
Determination of what to measure, at what scale, how often, etc.
Techniques to measure (e.g., what is there now & how is it changing) are expensive
Monitoring - expensive, takes time
Understanding of interactions (e.g., cascading effects)
Regulatory environment may define
Nature changes (e.g., forest fire, bard owl)

16. Work on maintaining “properly” functioning ecosystems
Third Approach
Work on maintaining “properly” functioning ecosystems
Key: Remember all the functions?

17. Two examples
• National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF)
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Program (MEA)

18. Or: Is your land ‘good’, changing, & changing in what direction?
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?

19. What’s needed? Early warning assessment system that is
Rapid & cost effective
And that is based on
Stand level sustainability (condition):
Development of functional indicators (of ecosystem services) &
associated benchmarks
These indicators/benchmarks should represent best available information/science.

20. Does it works in practice
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.

21. 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

22. 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

23. Yangjuan Land use Firewood Traditional Buckwheat Livestock
Conversion from local land race of corn to new hybrid corn

24. Ecosystem Goods and Services: Example 2
Definition of Ecosystem Goods and Services
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Program
Example

25. 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).

26. Which is not an ecosystem service?
Provisioning
Regulating
Cultural
Interventions
Supporting
Answer Now!

27. 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)

28. 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.)

29. MEA Conceptual Framework
Global
Regional
Local
Human well-being & poverty reduction
Life on Earth: Biodiversity
Ecosystem Services
Indirect Drivers of Change
• Demographic
• Economic
• Sociopolitical
• Science & technology
• Cultural & religious
Direct Drivers of Change
• Changes in land use & land cover
• Species removal or introductions
• Technology
• Climate change
• Natural physical & biological drivers
• External inputs

30. 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

31. 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

32. MEA: Assessments & Publications
December 2005

33. Pressures on Goals of MEA
Population Growth
Economy, consumption
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)

34. Conclusion: Difficulties
Setting limits and distributing responsibility
Scale & variable (s)
Measurement
Monitoring
Assessment
Regulation
Outcomes and Feedback
Choices
Political will = f (human will)