Document Details
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Title |
Incorporation of wildlife habitat capability into the multi-value, spatially explicit, complex cutblock ecosystem management model LLEMS: Year 1 | ||||||
Author |
Kimmins, J.P. (Hamish) | ||||||
Date |
2007 | ||||||
Abstract |
The days when individual forest values could be considered in isolation are past. Certification and gaining a social license to manage public forests requires value tradeoff analyses and consideration of possible future trends (scenario analyses) for multiple ecosystem values and environmental services (Vanclay 2003). Forecasting such trends requires knowledge based on both experience and research, but much of the latter is disciplinary in nature and not at the spatial, temporal and complexity scales of the issues of sustainability and stewardship (Kimmins et al. 2005). Making wrong choices about management can be very costly ? environmentally, socially and economically. Long term field trials are valuable, but they take a long time, by which time climate, social values and biotic conditions may have changed. Few alternatives can be examined in such trials for reasons of cost and area, and once established the trials generally cannot be changed to suit changing circumstances. There is an urgent need, therefore, to combine our experience and science-based understanding into forecasting systems, especially when dealing with new and essentially untested (over a full rotation) systems such as Variable Retention (Mitchell and Beese 2002; Serrouya and D?Eon 2004). The outcome of this project will be the extension of an existing advanced, complex cutblock design and management model so that it can address key habitat issues of selected wildlife species or guilds (based on many years of published research in the literature on wildlife habitat needs). Some of the key questions that will be explored with this tool include the following: ? Which cutblock designs, harvest systems and landscape patterns will offer the best balance of outcomes for multiple values at the local landscape level over one or multiple rotations? ? How effective is visualization in the communication of the possible outcomes of alternative harvest and management designs to different stakeholders to generate trust and public support for forest management? | ||||||
Report Number |
FIA2007MR282 | ||||||
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