How Do You Rate This Publication?
| Title: | People, space, time: factors that will govern forest sustainability |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Wear, David N.; Abt, Robert; Mangold, Robert |
| Date: | 1998 |
| Source: | Transactions of the 63rd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources conference; 1998 March 20-25; Orlando, FL. Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Institute: 348-361. |
| Description: |
People and their social organizations are the most substantial agents of change in forested ecosystems throughout the world. Even in the developed countries in the temperature latitudes, ongoing growth, and the transformation of economies continue to reshape forested landscapes. Resulting changes in both the extent and the structure of forests hold consequences for ecological function and environmental health. Accordingly, it is important to understand how people have and may further change the condition of forested landscapes in order to gauge the prospect for forest sustainability. Specifically, a better understanding of how people make choices regarding land and resources in pursuit of various benefits is needed. The cumulative human impact on landscapes is a consequence of all individual choices intended to pursue individuals' goals in response to the general scarcity of goods and services produced by lands in the region. This is especially true in the U.S. South where nearly all land is held by private owners. This paper examines the definition and use of indicators of change in forest conditions and how they might be adapted to monitor processes of change. In particular, the authors examine the two principle vectors of change in forested ecosystems, land use and timber management, and how these changes might be adequately monitored. The authors find generally that broad-scale indicators of sustainability may, at best, be devoid of information; at worst, they may mislead. The paper discusses challenges for measuring forest conditions, especially in a way that connects human actions with ecological consequences. |
 |
View and Print this Publication (158 KB) |
| Pristine Version: | An uncaptured or "pristine" version of this publication is available. It has not been subjected to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and therefore does not have any errors in the text. However it is a larger file size and some people may experience long download times. The "pristine" version of this publication is available here: View and Print the PRISTINE copy of this Publication (1.0 MB) | Publication Notes: |
We recommend that you also print this page and attach it to the printout of the article, to retain the full citation information.
This article was written and prepared by U.S. Government employees on official time, and is therefore in the public domain. Our on-line publications are scanned and captured using Adobe Acrobat. During the capture process some typographical errors may occur. Please contact the SRS Webmaster, srswebmaster@fs.fed.us if you notice any errors which make this publication unuseable. |
![[ Get Acrobat ]](/images/getacro.gif){kind=small} |
Get the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat reader or Acrobat Reader for Windows with Search and Accessibility |