1. Renewable Resources: Forest Ecosystems
Original
Frontier
Today

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 Provide
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)

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, succession), “young, mature, old.”
Today, these functions must be spatially and temporally coordinated (legacy of land surveys and ownership).

6. 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)

7. Preserving or Conserving Ecosystems: 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 (examine 3 ideas).

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
Impacted by climate change & invasive disease
Pinus albicaulis

10. Decline of Whitebark Pine
White pine blister rust: Cronartium ribicola, is a rust fungus with two hosts.
All North American 5- needled pines
Ribes spp. is its alternate host.
Mountain pine beetle
Fire suppression
Climate change

11. 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!

12. Manage for Carbon Dioxide Uptake
Monitor
Experiment
Goal: Use forest systems to take up CO2
Get credit for this carbon uptake
Techniques Used
Kyoto Protocol: Canada
Unable to meet

13. Methods of Study Difficulties
• Issues of scale (quality of info vs. extent of info)
• Monitoring
• Unknowns (soil carbon)

14. 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.

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

16. Three examples
National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF)
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Program (MEA)
The Natural Capital Project

17. 1- Early warning assessment system that is And that is based on
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

18. Ecosystem Goods and Services Cont.
Definition of Ecosystem Goods and Services
(2) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Program
(3) The Natural Capital Project

19. 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).

20. 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?
That the authors felt their reporting method was fine
That no fixes or solutions were provided
That human involvement was not evaluated.
That the MEA authors left the decision-making up to the decision-makers
That there were so many thick technical reports

21. 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)

22. 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.)

23. 2 - 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

24. 2 - MEA: Assessments & Publications
December 2005

25. 2 - Pressures on Goals of MEA
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)

26. 3 - Natural Capital Project Joint project of
Earth, we have a problem
Nature Conservancy
World Wildlife Fund
The Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University
Launched 31 October 2006

27. 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
Scientific methods
Financial instruments
Government policies

28. 3 - Natural Capital Project Details:
InVEST: Integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs
Problem definition approach
Scale
Economic
Biophysical

29. 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.

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

31. Orphaned Slides
Perhaps some of the slides have additional info that might be valuable.

32. 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

33. 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?

34. 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.

35. 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

36. 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

37. 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

38. 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

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