APES Chapter 11 Review 1. Five types of public land in the United States: * National Forest System- these forests are managed by the U.S. Forest Service and used for logging, mining, livestock grazing, farming, oil and gas extraction, recreation, hunting, fishing, and conservation of watershed, soil, and wildlife resources. * National Resource Lands- managed by the Bureau of Land Management, these lands are used for mining, oil and gas extraction, and livestock grazing. * National Wildlife Refuges- 542 refuges managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most refuges protect habitats and breeding areas for waterfowl and big game to provide a harvestable supply for hunters, a few protect endangered species from extinction. * National Park System- managed by the National Park Service. It includes 56 major parks and 331 national recreation areas, monuments, memorials, battlefields, historic sites, parkways, trails, rivers, seashores, and lakeshores. Only camping, hiking, sport fishing, and boating can take place in the national parks, but sport hunting, mining, and oil and gas drilling is allowed in National Recreation Areas. * National Wilderness Preservation System- 660 road less areas that lie within the other types of public lands and are managed by agencies in charge of those lands. Most of these areas are open only for recreational activities such as hiking, sport fishing, camping, and non-motorized boating. 2. In 1988, an industry-backed coalition called the wise-use movement was formed. Its major goals were to weaken or repeal most of the country’s environmental laws and regulations and destroy the effectiveness of the environmental movement in the United States. Politically powerful coal, oil, mining, automobile, timber, and ranching interests helped back this movement. 3. An old-growth forest is an uncut or regenerated primary forest that has not been seriously disturbed by human activities or natural disasters for 200 years or more. An example of an old-growth forest is in the U.S. state of Washington’s Olympic National Forest. Unlike old-growth forests, second-growth forests result from a secondary ecological succession. These forests develop after the trees in an area have been removed by human activities, such as clear-cutting for timber or cropland, or by natural forces, such as fire, hurricanes, or volcanic eruption. A tree farm is similar to a second-growth forest because is it not the result of primary succession, However, it is characterized as a managed tract with uniformly aged trees of one or two genetically uniform species that usually are harvested by clear-cutting as soon as they become commercially available. An example of a second-growth forest is in Stanley Park, Vancouver, Canada. 4. Ecological Services: * Support energy flow and chemical cycling * Reduce soil erosion * Absorb and release water * Purify water * Purify air * Influence local and regional climate * Store atmospheric carbon * Provide numerous wildlife habitats
Economic Services: * Fuelwood * Lumber * Pulp to make paper * Mining * Livestock grazing * Recreation * Jobs 5. Even-aged management involves maintaining trees in a given stand at about the same age and size. In this approach, sometimes called industrial forestry, a simplified tree plantation replaces a biologically diverse old-growth or second-growth forest. The plantation consists of one or two fast growing and economically desirable species that can be harvested every 6-10 years, depending on the species. Uneven-aged management involves maintaining a variety of tree species in a stand at many ages and sizes to foster natural regeneration. Here the goals are biological diversity, long-term sustainable production of high-quality timber, selective cutting of individual mature or intermediate-aged trees, and multiple use of the forest for timber, wildlife, watershed protection, and recreation.
Four types of tree harvesting: * Selective cutting- intermediate-aged or mature trees in an uneven-aged forest are cut singly or in small groups * Shelterwood cutting- removes all mature trees in an area in two or three cuttings over a period of time. This is even-aged management. * Seed tree cutting- loggers harvest nearly all of a stand’s trees in one cutting but leave a few uniformly distributed seed-producing trees to regenerate the stand. This is even-aged management. * Clear cutting- removes all trees from an area in a single cutting. This is uneven-aged management. 6. We have been destroying forests at an alarming rate but some of our reforestation efforts have been successful in expanding our forests. 7. Four ways biologists suggest how much of the world’s forests need to be protected: * Include an estimate of the economic use of economic services * Balance forest cutting and renewal * Identify forests with high biodiversity to protect them * Evaluate methods of identifying sustainably grown timber 8. Eight ways to manage forests more sustainably: * Grow more timber on long rotations * Rely more on selective cutting and strip cutting * No clear-cutting, seed tree, or shelter wood cutting on steeply sloped land * No fragmentation of remaining large blocks of forest * Sharply reduce road building into uncut forest areas * Leave most standing dead trees and fallen timber for wildlife habitat and nutrient recycling * Certify timber grown by sustainable methods * Include ecological services of trees and forests in estimating economic value 9. U.S. forests have expanded since 1920 and more wood is grown than is cut in the country. We have also set aside about 40% of our forests to be protected areas. Unfortunately, some of this growth has been from tree plantations which do not have the same level of biodiversity as old-growth forests. 10. Surface fires usually burn only undergrowth and leaf litter on the forest floor. These fires can kill seedlings and small trees but spare most mature trees and allow most wild animals to escape. Surface fires burn away flammable ground material and help prevent more destructive fires. They also release valuable mineral, stimulate the germination of certain tree seeds, and help control pathogens and insects. Crown fires may start on the ground but eventually burn whole trees and leap from treetop to treetop. They usually occur in forests that have had no surface fires for several decades. These rapidly burning fires can destroy most vegetation, kill wildlife, increase soil erosion, and burn or damage human structures in their paths. Ground fires are most common in northern peat bogs. They may smolder for days or weeks and are difficult to detect and distinguish. Two ways to help protect forest resources from fire are prevention and prescribed burning (setting controlled surface fires to prevent buildup of flammable material). 11. Three factors underlying causes of tropical deforestation: * First, it is difficult to interpret satellite images. * Second, some countries hide or exaggerate deforestation rates for political and economic reasons. * Third, governments and international agencies define forest, deforestation, and forest degradation in different ways.
Human activities that actually destroy the tropical forest: * Oil drilling * Mining * Tree plantations * Cash crops * Logging * Roads 12. One method is to help new settlers in tropical forests learn how to practice small-scale sustainable agriculture and forestry. The Lacandon Maya Indians of Chiapas, Mexico, for example, use a multi-layered system of agroforestry to cultivate as many as 75 crop species on 1-hectare plots for up to 7 years. After that they plant a new crop to allow regeneration of the soil in the original plot. Another approach is to sustainably harvest some of the renewable resources such as fruits and nuts in rain forests. For example, about 6000 families in the Peten region of Guatemala make a comfortable living by sustainable extracting various rain forest products. 13. Popularity is one of the biggest problems of national and state parks in the United States. During the summer, users entering the most popular U.S. national and state parks often face hour-long backups and experience noise, congestion, eroded trials, and stress instead of peaceful solitude. Many parks suffer damage from the migration or deliberate introduction of nonnative species. For example, European wild boars imported to North Carolina in 1912 for hunting, threaten vegetation in part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Solutions to these problems include adding new parkland near threatened parks, buying private land inside parks, limiting the number of visitors to crowded park areas, and increasing the number and pay of park rangers. 14. Between 1963 and 1983, politically powerful ranching families cleared much of Costa Rica’s forests to graze cattle. Despite such widespread forest loss, Costa Rica is a superpower of biodiversity, with an estimated 500,000 plant and animal species. In the mid-1970s, Costa Rica established a system of reserves and national parks that by 2003 included about a quarter of its land. Costa Rica now devotes a larger proportion of its land to biodiversity conservation than any other country. To reduce deforestation the government has eliminated subsidies for converting forests to cattle grazing land. And it pays landowners to maintain or restore tree coverage. The goal is to make sustaining forests profitable. As a result Costa Rica has gone from having one of the world’s highest deforestation rates to one of the lowest. 15. The Nature Conservancy has used private and corporate donations to create the world’s largest system of private natural areas and wildlife sanctuaries. Everyone in my family and I should consider joining and donating to the Nature Conservancy because the bigger it is, the more awareness it will bring to people about the harms of degradation and loss of biodiversity. In addition, with more donations come more sanctuaries and better care for them. 16. Adaptive ecosystem management is based on using four principles. First, integrate ecological, economic, and social principals to help maintain and restore the sustainability and biological diversity of reserves while supporting sustainable economies and communities. Second, seek ways to get government agencies, private conservation organizations, scientists, business interests, and private landowners to reach a consensus on how to achieve common conservation objectives. Third, view all decisions and strategies as scientific and social experiments and use failures as opportunities for learning and improvement. Fourth, emphasize continual information gathering, monitoring, reassessment, flexibility, adaptation, and innovation in the face of uncertainty and usually unpredictable change. 17. Biodiversity hot spots are areas especially rich in plant and animal species that are found nowhere else and are in great danger of extinction or serious ecological disruption. 18. Remediation, replacement, and creating artificial ecosystems are some of the techniques used by conservation biologists to rehabilitate and restore damaged ecosystems. Remediation is the cleaning up of chemical contaminants from a site by physical of chemical methods to protect human health and as a first step toward redevelopment of a site for human use. Replacement is the replacing of a degraded ecosystem with another type of ecosystem. Some examples of creating artificial ecosystems are the creation of artificial wetlands. 19. Eight steps E.O. Wilson has proposed for protecting the world’s biodiversity: * Take immediate action to preserve the world’s biological hot spots. * Keep intact the worlds remaining old-growth forests and cease all logging of such forests. * Complete the mapping of the world terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity so we know what we have and can make conservation efforts more precise and cost-effective. * Determine the world’s marine hot spots and assign them the same priority for immediate action as for those on land. * Concentrate on protecting and restoring everywhere the world’s lakes and river systems, which are the most threatened ecosystems of all. * Ensure that the full range of the earth’s terrestrial aquatic ecosystems are included in a global conservation strategy. * Make conservation profitable. * Initiate ecological restoration products worldwide to heal some of the damage we have done and increase the share of the earth’s land and water allotted to the rest of nature.