Ecosystem management

1. Implementing Ecosystem
Management

2. An Ecosystem Management Process
Step 1. Select an ecologically meaningful unit (e.g. an ecoregion, a
landscape, a watershed, etc.)
Step 2. Conduct an integrated assessment, consisting of:
- An ecological assessment
a) Terrestrial
b) Aquatic
- A Socio-economic assessment
- An integrated analysis of the first two components
Step 3 Develop a range of management alternatives
 Determine the “Desired Future Condition”
Step 4. Select an alternative, then implement it.
Step 5. Monitor

3. How do we construct a range of
management alternatives?
1. “No Action” alternative – required by NEPA
2. A range of alternatives that varies by the extent or
intensity of actions proposed
• Slight action
• Moderate action
• Extreme action
3. Alternatives that tradeoff multiple objectives in
varying combinations
4. Alternatives proposed by interest groups or
constituencies

4. Sewing Together a
Functional Landscape:
What are the building blocks of
a functional landscape?

5. There is a spectrum of management
opportunities
Active
Management:
• Intensive landscape
manipulation
• Conservation through an
orchestrated shifting
mosaic of patches over
time
• Provides resource
managers with maximum
flexibility but carries high
risk
Passive
Management:
• Conservation focused on
fully protected “core”
reserves
• Initial active restoration
efforts often included
• But nature left “to take its
course” thereafter
Intermediary
Approaches
• Combines elements of
both
• Landscape zoned into a
range of allocations
• Different allocations
managed actively or
passively or somewhere in
between

6. IUCN’s* Six Protected Areas
Management Categories
Category I. Strict Nature Reserve: managed for science or wilderness
Category II. National Park: managed primarily for ecosystem protection
and recreation
Category III. Natural Monument: managed primarily for conservation of
specific natural features
Category IV. Habitat/Species Management Area: managed for conservation
through active intervention
Category V. Protected Landscape/Seascape: Managed for cultural and
scenic integrity, conservation, and recreation; human
settlements and agricultural areas are accommodated
Category VI. Managed Resource Protected Area: Managed primarily for the
sustainable use of ecosystems
IUCN = The World Conservation Union, previously
known as the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature

7. Large
Core
Reserve
Small
Core
Reserve

8. Protected Areas Explained
1. What is a protected area?
• “An area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection of
biological diversity and natural and associated cultural resources, and
managed through legal or other effective means (IUCN 1996).”
2. Benefits provided by protected areas
– Conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity
– Recreation
– Prevention of erosion on watersheds
– Provision of clean water to cities
– Provision of clean air
– Control of biological pests
– Preservation of medicinal and genetic resources
– Maintenance of harvestable resources
– Soil regeneration
– Nutrient cycling
– Carbon sequestration/climatic regulation

9. Core Reserves
• SLOSS = single large or several small
• Minimum Critical Area: The minimum size needed to support
viable populations of constituent species
• Minimum Dynamic Area: The minimum size needed to
absorb large disturbances and still maintain colonization sources and
viable populations
• Redundancy
• Representativeness
• Gap Analysis

10. National Gap Analysis Program
The mission of the Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is to provide regional
assessments of the conservation status of native vertebrate species and
natural land cover types and to facilitate the application of this information
to land management activities. This is accomplished through the following
five objectives:
1. map the land cover of the United States
2. map predicted distributions of vertebrate species for the U.S.
3. document the representation of vertebrate species and land cover
types in areas managed for the long-term maintenance of
biodiversity
4. provide this information to the public and those entities charged
with land use research, policy, planning, and management
5. build institutional cooperation in the application of this
information to state and regional management activities.

11. Status of the Gap Analysis Program

12. Vegetation/landcover:
picture is Lake Champlain
lowlands from VT Gap Project
Overlaid on
Vertebrate species
distributions: picture
is bat diversity in
Washington state from
WA Gap Project
Overlaid on
maps of
protected areas

14. Result: Biologically important areas
left out of protected areas system are
recommended for future protection

15. Marine Protected Areas of the World

16. Hawaiian Islands National Marine Monument:
• Largest marine reserve in the world
• 140,000 sq. miles

17. Protected Areas for
Individual
Commercial Fish
Species

18. Protected Areas
as Population
“Sources” for
entire
commercial
fisheries

19. Nodes and MUMs (Noss and Harris 1986)

20. Buffer
Buffer

21. Buffers
• Standards and guidelines prescribe management actions and policies
that maintain habitat features and connectivity around core.
• Human uses are accommodated if they don’t compromise the primary
objective of the core.
• Can include several layers or concentric circles of buffering, with
decreasing levels of protection moving away from the core
• Buffers often exist on paper but mean little in reality due to lack
enforcement or conflicts with local communities, land tenure, etc.
Examples
• UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme  Biosphere reserves
– Yellowstone, Olympic National Park, Smokey Mountains National Park
 Is it working?
• Integrated Conservation and Development Programs (ICDP)  internationally
sponsored projects, including indigenous extractive reserves, in developing
nations

22. MAB Biosphere Reserves in the United States

24. Terrestrial Corridors
• Pros
– Species for which the corridors provide effective dispersal habitat
can use them
– Helps maintain demographic (and thus genetic) interaction
between populations
– Provide landscape features with other, indirect benefits, such as
wind breaking, run-off reduction, soil stabilization, etc.
• Cons
– May be a “sink” for a subset of species
– May expose dispersing individuals to predation
– Animals may not find or use them
– Hard to establish wide enough (and long enough) corridors in
populated landscapes

25. Source: Bo Wilmer

27. Riparian Corridor

28. Riparian Corridors
Pros
• “dendritic” networks form an extensive system of potential
corridors
• Many species prefer to move along riparian corridors
• Links together aquatic ecosystems
• Corridors act as riparian buffers, so they provide other
ecological functions, such as bank stabilization, in-stream
shade, habitat for riparian dependent species, etc.
Cons
• Some terrestrial species won’t use them.
• They don’t entirely link together headwater areas or
provide lateral linkages in lowland areas  they don’t
always connect the core area you need connected!

29. Connectivity: Have to think about
aquatic ecosystem connectivity too!

30. Non-corridor Connectivity Approaches
• Provide a variety of habitats structures across the landscape and in
intervening areas between core reserves.
• These might include:
- Smaller patches and blocks of habitat
- A mosaic of patches that provides the mix of habitat types needed
to support dispersing animals
- Forest stands managed to “dispersal habitat” standards
- Individual structures, such as snags and scattered larger trees.
- Long-rotation forestry; gradient-of-retention forestry
- Protection for special habitats, such as caves, talus slopes, other
rocky out-croppings, wetlands, seeps, etc.
• Example: the Northwest Forest Plan – used a combination of riparian
buffers and structural retention in managed areas to provide
connectivity, but decided not to use discrete terrestrial corridors

31. Late-Successional
Reserves Designated by
the Northwest Forest
Plan
From: Vogt, K.A., J.C. Gordon, J.P. Wargo,
D.J. Vogt, H. Asbjornsen, P.A. Palmiotto,
H. J. Clark, J.L. O’Hara, W.S. Keeton, T.
Patel-Weynand, and E. Witten. 1997.
Ecosystems: Balancing Science with
Management. Springer-Verlag.

32. “Demonstration of Ecosystem
Management Options”

33. 15 trees per acre:
How effective is
this ecologically?

34. Wetland
Restoration
Riparian
Restoration

35. Restoration Areas
Restoration is the return of a degraded ecosystem to a close
approximation of its remaining natural potential.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies’ principles of good
restoration:
• Preserve and protect aquatic resources
• Restore ecological integrity
• Restore natural structure
• Restore natural function
• Work within the watershed and broader landscape context
• Understand the natural potential of the watershed
• Address ongoing causes of degradation
• Develop clear, achievable, and measurable goals
• Focus on feasibility
• Use a reference site
• Anticipate future changes
• Involve the skills and insights of a multi-disciplinary team
• Design for self-sustainability
• Use passive restoration, when appropriate
• Restore native species and avoid non-native species
• Use natural fixes and bioengineering techniques, where possible
• Monitor and adapt where changes are necessary

36. Matrix
Matrix

37. Matrix
• Matrix provides the primary area for intensive resource use, including
extractive uses and more intensive recreational development.
• Matrix is very important ecologically. Why?
– It is the dominant patch type – covers the largest area
– So probably includes much, if the not majority, of the biodiversity
– Determines the level of connectivity
– Strongly influences the effectiveness of reserves
– Produces ecosystem goods and services for people
• “Standards and guidelines” on public lands, or other incentives or
collaborative-based approaches on private lands, help maintain some
level of habitat protection and ecosystem functioning.
• Site-suitability standards that prescribe the site-specific
appropriateness of management activities.

38. Matrix
Large
Core
Reserve
Buffer
Wetland
Restoration
Riparian
Restoration
Riparian Corridor
Matrix
Matrix
Large
Core
Reserve
Buffer
Small
Core
Reserve
Intensively modified
areas/urban/low potential

39. Where will the functional
landscape approach work?
• The functional landscape approach will involve a
range of strategies depending on context.
• Can fully implement on large-ownerships, such as
in the western U.S., portions of the northern forest
bioregion, southern Appalachian region, etc.
• Need other approaches in private and small
ownership dominated landscapes

41. Strategies for private land
dominated landscapes
• Tax incentives
• Property tax reform
• Conservation easements
• Information sharing
• Watershed
groups/coordination
• Community-based forestry
and tourism
• Wildland, wetland, or forest
mitigation banks
• Fostering “sense of
place”
• Green certification
• Planning and land-use
zoning
• Subsidies: some like
them, some don’t
• Public lands acquisition
• Regulation through
environmental statutes

42. Tax-Based Approaches
• Tax incentives
• Property tax reform

43. Easements
• Conservation
easements
• Transfer of
development rights

44. Information Sharing
• Information transfer
• Community/watershed groups
White River
Partnership:
• Local
governments/towns
• State agencies
• Federal agencies
• Conservation
groups

45. Conservation “Banks”
• Wildlands, wetlands, and forests
http://nature.org/aboutus/projects/forestbank/

46. Fostering Sense of Place

47. Regulation, Subsidies, or
Acquisition?
• Land and Water Conservation Fund, est. 1965
-Authorized to spend $900 million annually
- Only met twice in 42 years
-FY 2007: Enacted Allocation: $143,000,000
- to Forest Service, Park Service, BLM,
Fish and Wildlife Service, and State grants