Resource Management Considering & Balancing Multiple Interests
Resource Management Objectives
- List various types of resources, including non-renewable, renewable, and perpetual.
- Describe the role of a natural resource manager, including how it incorporates multiple disciplines.
- Explain how an understanding of tree characteristics, soils, ecosystem interactions, fire disturbance, succession, human history, and the timber industry all relate to managing ponderosa pine forests.
Natural resource management balances current needs with stewardship for future generations that may utilize these resources as well. This involves identifying and communicating with stakeholders and predicting needs into the future.
Managing resources and the environments they are found within is a complex task.
Non-renewable resources like fossil fues can have significant environmental costs but are currently critical in food production and powering economies.
Renewable resources like air, water, and topsoil can become contaminated to the point where they are unusable, or require great expense to utilize. Organisms are often considered to be renewable because they can produce offspring.
Perpetual resources have potential to reduce some of the damage associated with non-renewable resources, but can be more suited for some uses and locations than others.
Intact ecosystems, communities of organisms and their environment, can also have significant value.
Resource Management
Resource managers attempt to make decisions on resource allocation for current and future use.
In addition to understanding the science underlying organisms and environments, resource managers need to be fluent in other disciplines as well.
Resource management is challenging. Not only are you balancing multiple needs, even just addressing a single need can be difficult. An example is maintaining ecotones, transitional habitats between larger ecosystems. Many plants and animals use these areas between habitats to forage for food and raise their young. A land manager has to consider not only the forest and the meadow, but also the amount and quality of the ecotone between them.
Forest management is an excellent example of how resource managers attempt to make decisions on resource allocation for current and future use.
Managing Forests
To get an idea of the complexity managing resources, we are taking a trip to the Ponderosa Pine forests at elevation in the Cascade Mountains. Many of the photos and videos were taken near Bend, Oregon.
Many of the forested areas look highly managed with trees all about the same age and burnt out shrubs. This is part of our story.
From the conifer identification section, pine trees have needle-like leaves in a b_____.
Ponderosa pine trees have three long needles in each bundle. The needles offer some protection to the growing buds at the tip of each stem.
Ponderosa pine has thick bark that looks like puzzle pieces fitting together. These trees can often survive low-intensity fires.
Ponderosa pine cones open on warm days and seeds are spread by high winds. This contrasts with the serrotinous cones of lodgepole pine that may need fire to open the cones for seed dispersal.
“P-pine” bark has a characteristic vanilla-like scent you can smell on warm days. Chemicals repel some of the potential parasites. One parasite that causes significant damage to p-pine is the bark beetle. Occasional fires decrease bark beetle population size.
Ponderosa pine seedlings and other forest species rely on topsoil for survival. What are the three components of topsoil?
Mycorrhizal relationships support many species, indicating the critical role of species like fungi that are often out of view.
Frequent low-intensity fires speed nutrient availability to surviving plants. Large high-intensity fires burn the organic matter and destroy many organisms within the topsoil and it can take years for the topsoil to recover.
Clear-cutting, or removing all of the trees in an area, can be an efficient timber harvest practice in the short-term, but it can have long-term negative impacts on the remaining soil.
This is Douglas Fir in the coastal mountain range.
In steep areas, trees are critical in stabilizing soils and reducing soil erosion.
Management of this coastal Douglas fir forest means balancing a variety of uses. How many can you list?
Everywhere you go in the Pacific Northwest, there are signs indicating the need for frequent low-intensity fires.
It seems strange to talk about the benefits of forest fires after the devastating losses of recent massive wildland fires.
Earlier in the course we examined the the impact of massive fires occurring in the past few decades in the Cascade Mountains. Succession that follows a fire is a gradual process.
Part of the reason for why the fires were so large was a century of fire suppression practices that were intended to protect the economically significant trees. Accumulated “fuel” over time coupled with warmer and drier temperatures leads to fires that can ladder (climb) up ponderosa trees destrying areas of active bud growth.
Frequent low-intensity fires serve many purposes. One is the clearing of shrubs that compete with young trees. Historically native peoples and early settlers set fires to increase small plant growth on the forest fllor that support grazing animals.
To “re-set” back to frequent low-intensity fires, “controlled burns” are now a common practice in forested areas.
If you visit a burn recovery zone, there are specific safety issues to consider.
The next section explores ways to have a personal impact on environmental issues.
Check your knowledge. Can you:
- list various types of resources, including non-renewable, renewable, and perpetual?
- describe the role of a natural resource manager, including how it incorporates multiple disciplines?
- explain how an understanding of tree characteristics, soils, ecosystem interactions, fire disturbance, succession, human history, and the timber industry all relate to managing ponderosa pine forests?
Go back to the Sustainability Page
Go forward to the Personal Impact Page
Science Stories Guide Contents
Complete all four of these sections before taking the quiz and making your media piece.
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