Effects of roads in forested ecosystems span direct physical and ecological ones (such as geomorphic and hydrologic effects), indirect and landscape level ones (such as effects on aquatic habitat, terrestrial vertebrates, and biodiversity conservation), and socioeconomic ones (such as passive-use value, economic effects on development and range management). Road effects take place in the contexts of environmental settings, their history, and the state of engineering practices, and must be evaluated in those contexts for best management approaches.Keywords: Roads, roadless areas, forest ecosystems, geomorphology, hydrology, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity, nonmarket values, heritage values, economic development, grazing, mineral resources, fire. AbstractRoads are a vital component of civilization. They provide access for people to study, enjoy, and commune with forested wildlands and to extract an array of resources from natural and modified ecosystems. Roads have well-documented, short-and long-term effects on the environment that have become highly controversial, because of the value society now places on unroaded wildlands and because of wilderness conflicts with resource extraction.The approach taken in this report is to identify known and hypothesized road-related issues and to summarize the scientific information available about them. The report identifies links among processes and effects that suggest both potential compatible uses and potential problems and risks. Generalizations are made where appropriate, but roads issues and road science usually cannot be effectively separated from the specific ecologic, economic, social, and public lands management contexts in which roads exist or are proposed.Across a forest or river basin, the access needs, economic dependencies, landscape sensitivities, downstream beneficial uses of water, and so on can be reasonably well defined, but these relations tend to differ greatly from place to place. An effective synthesis of road issues draws local experts together to thoroughly evaluate road and access benefits, problems and risks, and to inform managers about what roads may be needed, for how long, for what purposes, and at what benefits and costs to the agency and society.Road effects and uses may be somewhat arbitrarily divided into beneficial and detrimental. The largest group of beneficial variables relates to access. We identified access-related benefits as harvest of timber and special forest products, grazing, mining, recreation, fire control, land management, research and monitoring, access to private inholdings, restoration, local community critical needs, subsistence, and the cultural value of the roads themselves. Nonaccess-related benefits include edge habitat, fire breaks, absence of economic alternatives for land management, and jobs associated with building and maintaining the roads.Undesirable consequences include adverse effects on hydrology and geomorphic features (such as debris slides and sedimentation), habitat fragmentation, predation, road ki...
A systematic approach to adaptive management is proposed to simultaneously manage at the regional, provincial, and watershed scales and to reorganize the activity of agencies to better support the concepts of adaptive management. Reorganizing management activities into these four groupings is recommended: adjustment (expanded decision-making); linked, not single actions; feedback, including monitoring; and information synthesis. A major new focus for the collaborative decision process is to identify and set priorities among possible future adjustments. Linked actions that integrate management and research would then be designed to produce the information needed to decide whether to make proposed adjustments. Feedback and information synthesis will follow to facilitate and inform future decisions. The strategy requires making better decisions; improving public participation; and developing science-based management.
Principles for sustainable-ecosystem management are derived by integrating fundamental, societal, and scientific premises. Ecosystem science is applied in the design of a system of management focused on building overlap between what people collectively want and what is ecologically possible. We conclude that management must incorporate more science and societal processes in the systemto better inform decisions and to learn by "managing as an experiment." A management model is proposed that laces together societal values and ecological capacity.
Throughout their history, conservation science and sustainable-yield management have failed to maintain the productivity of living resources. Repeated overexploitation of economic species, loss of biological diversity, and degradation of regional environments now call into question the economic ideas and values that have formed the foundation of scientific management of natural resources. In particular, management efforts intended to maximize production and ensure efficient use of economic "resources" have consistently degraded the larger support systems upon which these and all other species ultimately depend. This series of essays examines the underlying historical, cultural, and philosophical issues that undermine sustainability and proposes alternative approaches to conservation. These approaches emphasize the relations among populations rather than among individuals; the integrity of whole ecosystems across longer time frames; the importance of qualitative as well as quantitative indicators of human welfare and sustainability; and the unpredictable and interdependent interactions among "natural," scientific, and regulatory processes.
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