Forecasting landscape-scale, cumulative effects of forest management on vegetation and wildlife habitat: A case study of issues, limitations, and opportunities

Shifley, Stephen R.; Thompson, Frank R.; Dijak, William D.; Fan, Zhaofei

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2007.08.030

Cited by 47 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…P71: A variety of stressor-based and effect-based indicators have been described, such as habitat attributes (e.g., May et al 1997 (watershed land cover), Jennings et al 1999 (lake shoreline substrates), Shifley et al 2008 (forest attributes)), chemical attributes (e.g., Smith and Owens 2014), metabolomic markers (e.g., Viant 2009;Van Aggelen et al 2010), and indices of the taxonomic or functional structure of communities (e.g., Norris and Georges 1993;Dolédec et al 2006;Borja et al 2011). These indicators are available for adoption by CEA practitioners wishing to associate stressors with effects on VECs 32 .…”

Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is a sub-discipline of environmental impact assessment that is concerned with appraising the collective effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment. Aspirations for CEA have been expressed by many authors since 1969, when the foundation of environmental appraisal was laid by the US National Environmental Policy Act. This paper's purposes are (i) to review aspirations for CEA, relative to current practice; and (ii) to fully explain and critique the logic that connects CEA's operational steps and underlying philosophies. A literature review supports the following statements: Some conceptualizations emphasize the delivery of information to support decision making as the key purpose of CEA; others deem collaboration, debate, and learning as most important. Consensus on CEA's operational steps has been reached, but each step requires practitioners to make analytical decisions (e.g., about the scope of issues to include or the time horizon to consider) and objective rules for how to approach those decisions are lacking. Numerical methods for assessing cumulative effects are largely available, meaning that CEA's biggest problems are not scientific. CEA cannot succeed without substantive public engagement, monitoring, and adaptive management. CEA is best undertaken regionally, rather than project-byproject. CEA and planning are complementary, and should be merged. In its most enlightened form, CEA is a useful tool for ensuring that human undertakings ultimately conform to Earth's finite biosphere, but current practice falls short of the ideal, and CEA's logical derivation is not entirely sound. As regards CEA's big problems, sustainability has not been defined clearly enough to make criteria for judging the significance of cumulative effects indisputable; legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks are poorly aligned for CEA; and objective criteria for judging the adequacy of CEA's scope, scale, and thresholds do not exist, which makes the question of how to provide general guidance to practitioners intractable. Recommendations call for sustainability goals to be clearly expressed as measurable targets. Furthermore, precaution in human enterprise should be exercised by avoiding, minimizing, restoring, and offsetting negative cumulative effects. CEA can assist by quantifying and optimizing trade-offs.Key words: environmental impact assessment, planning, environmental management, sustainability, conceptual model, precautionary principle.Résumé : L'évaluation des effets cumulatifs (EEC) est une sous-discipline de l'évaluation de l'impact sur l'environnement qui porte sur l'évaluation des effets collectifs des activités humaines et des processus naturels sur l'environnement. De nombreux auteurs ont exprimé leurs aspirations quant à l'EEC depuis 1969, le moment où les fondements de l'évaluation environnementale ont été jetés par le « National Environmental Policy Act » aux États-Unis. Les buts de cette étude sont (i) d'examiner les aspirations quant à...

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Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…P75: Modeling involves trade-offs between scale and precision, and between conceptual complexity and computational complexity (Shifley et al 2008).…”

Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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“…Relevant management objectives include maintaining a sustained yield of wood products, conservation of biodiversity (Shifley et al 2008), and assessment of vegetation change impacts on hydrology. These simulations can be particularly advantageous when multiple ecosystem services must be considered (Nelson et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected climate change impacts on forest land cover and land use over the Willamette River Basin, Oregon, USA

2015

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Upland forests in the Pacific Northwest currently provide a host of ecosystem services. However, the regional climate is expected to warm significantly over the course of the 21st century and this factor must be accounted for in planning efforts to maintain those services. Here we couple a dynamic global vegetation model (MC2) with a landscape simulation model (Envision) to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on the vegetation cover and the disturbance regime in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon. Three CMIP5 climate model scenarios, downscaled to a 4 km spatial resolution, were employed. In our simulations, the dominant potential vegetation cover type remained forest throughout the basin, but forest type transitioned from primarily evergreen needleleaf to a mixture of broadleaf and needleleaf growth forms adapted to a warmer climate. By 2100, there was a difference (i.e., climate/vegetation disequilibrium) between potential and actual forest type for 20-50 % of the forested area. In the moderate to high climate change scenarios, the average area burned per year increased three to nine fold from the present day. Forest harvest on private land is projected to be affected late in the century because of fire altering the availability of rotation-age stands. A generally more disturbed and open forest landscape is expected, which may significantly alter the hydrologic cycle.Climatic Change

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“…The temporal variability of such indicators can be modeled with long-term simulations of vegetation succession (Perry and Millington 2008) and simulation models can give estimates of habitat availability and quality over entire landscapes (Messier et al 2003b, Marcot 2006). Simulation models can also model direct effects of different forest management strategies on vegetation characteristics and habitat quality , Shifley et al 2008 and their sustainability can be evaluated with dynamic-landscape metapopulation models (Wintle et al 2005). Furthermore, prioritization tools can provide estimates of threats to biodiversity resulting from alternate management strategies and therefore can contribute to increasing transparency, accountability and efficiency of public investment in biodiversity (Wintle 2008).…”

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative or positive effects of plantation and intensive forestry on biodiversity: A matter of scale and perspective

Hartmann

Daoust²,

Bigué³

et al. 2010

The Forestry Chronicle

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Terrestrial biodiversity is closely linked to forest ecosystems but anthropogenic reductions in forest cover and changes in forest structure and composition jeopardize their biodiversity. Several forest species are threatened because of reduced habitat quality and fragmentation or even habitat loss as a result of forest management activities. In response to this threat, integrated forest management (IFM) was developed in the early 1990s and has been applied over large spatial scales ever since. While IFM seeks to satisfy both human resource demands and ecosystem integrity, the whole forest matrix is affected and this may also have negative impacts on biodiversity. The concept of forest zoning (e.g., Triad) avoids these issues by physically separating land uses from each other. The zoning approach has been developed in the same period as IFM, but there are still very few examples of large-scale applications. This may be because its distinctiveness from IFM may not always seem clear and because forest zoning is not easily implemented. Here we explain these differences and show that IFM and the zoning approach are indeed different management paradigms. We advocate the use of high-yield plantations within the zoning paradigm as a means for biodiversity conservation and review the literature (with an emphasis on the northern hemisphere and on plantation forestry within a land-zoning approach) on impacts of forest management activities on biodiversity. Furthermore, we give advice on issues that require consideration when implementing forest zoning at both the stand and the landscape levels. We recommend several small changes in design and management of forest plantations as a means to significantly increase their biodiversity value. We conclude that while forest zoning seems an adequate strategy for the Canadian forestry sector, a shift in paradigm must carry over to policy-makers and legislation if this approach is to succeed.Key words: biodiversity, landbase zoning, forest management, intensive silviculture, plantation forests RÉSUMÉ La biodiversité terrestre est étroitement liée aux écosystèmes forestiers, mais la réduction du couvert forestier par des activités humaines et des changements dans la structure et la composition forestière constituent une menace pour la biodiversité. Plusieurs espèces forestières sont menacées par la dégradation, la fragmentation ou même la perte totale de leur habitat occasionnées par l'aménagement forestier. Pour y remédier, l'aménagement intégré des ressources forestières (AIRF) a été développé et appliqué à grande échelle depuis le début des années 1990. Quoique l' AIRF vise à la fois à satisfaire la demande de produits et services forestiers et à protéger l'intégrité des écosystèmes forestiers, cette approche engendre une pénétration presque totale de la matrice forestière et pose ainsi des risques pour la biodiversité. Par contre, le zonage forestier (ex. Triade) vise à réduire la pénétration du territoire forestier par une séparation spatiale des objectifs d'aménagement....

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Forecasting landscape-scale, cumulative effects of forest management on vegetation and wildlife habitat: A case study of issues, limitations, and opportunities

Cited by 47 publications

References 48 publications

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Projected climate change impacts on forest land cover and land use over the Willamette River Basin, Oregon, USA

Negative or positive effects of plantation and intensive forestry on biodiversity: A matter of scale and perspective

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