Download or read book Linking Ecosystem Services with State and transition Models to Evaluate Rangeland Management Decisions written by Sapana Lohani and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rangelands are a major type of land found on all continents. Though they comprise around 70% of the world's land area, knowledge of rangelands is limited and immature. Rangelands supply humans with food and fiber at very low energy costs compared to cultivated lands. They are inherently heterogeneous, highly variable in time and space. Rangeland management needs to consider the impacts of long-term vegetation transition. It needs a conceptual framework defining potential vegetation communities, describing the management induced transition of one vegetation community to another, and documenting the expected benefits provided by the various potential vegetation communities. The most widely used conceptual unit in the rangeland discipline is the "ecological site". Ecological sites can be an effective unit that should respond to management consistently and can help managers understand the site's potential to meet human needs. A state and transition model (STM) brings ecological sites and their potential vegetative states together to build a conceptual framework showing the major causes of transitions between states of an ecological site and thus helping make adaptive management decisions. Within the STM there is a need for an indicator of ecosystem health. Ecosystem services can be important to evaluate alternative states. Ecosystem services do not pass through a market for valuation, though often the cost would be very high if, through mismanagement, the ecosystem is no longer capable of providing those services. Vegetation communities are constantly facing reversible or irreversible transitions triggered by natural events and/or management actions. The framework generated in this study is significant in using remote sensing to generate state and transition models for a large area and in using ecosystem services to evaluate natural and/or management induced transitions as described in the STM. This dissertation addresses the improvement of public rangelands management in the West. It applies geospatial technologies to map ecological sites and states on those sites, characterizes transitions between states and selects a desired state to manage towards based on a systematic assessment of the value of flows of environmental services. The results from this study are an evaluation of improved draft ecological site maps for a larger area using remote sensing images, a simplified state-and-transition model adapted to remote sensing capabilities to study transitions due to climatic events and management practices, and a constrained optimization model that incorporates ecosystem services and the simplified STM to evaluate management costs and conservation benefits. The study showed that brush treatment is the most effective management practice to cause state transitions. The highest increase in the high cover state was by 24%. Areas under grazing and drought show slow transitions from brush to grass and also after prescribed fire vegetation take at least two years to recover.
Download or read book Rangeland Systems written by David D. Briske and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.
Download or read book Rangeland Health written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1994-02-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rangelands comprise between 40 and 50 percent of all U.S. land and serve the nation both as productive areas for wildlife, recreational use, and livestock grazing and as watersheds. The health and management of rangelands have been matters for scientific inquiry and public debate since the 1880s, when reports of widespread range degradation and livestock losses led to the first attempts to inventory and classify rangelands. Scientists are now questioning the utility of current methods of rangeland classification and inventory, as well as the data available to determine whether rangelands are being degraded. These experts, who are using the same methods and data, have come to different conclusions. This book examines the scientific basis of methods used by federal agencies to inventory, classify, and monitor rangelands; it assesses the success of these methods; and it recommends improvements. The book's findings and recommendations are of interest to the public; scientists; ranchers; and local, state, and federal policymakers.
Download or read book Characterizing Rangeland Ecosystems and Their Sustainable Management in a Changing Climate written by Julian J. Reyes and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rangelands support our food system through forage production for livestock which subsequently support beef products to feed an increasingly affluent and growing human population. Most rangelands occur in water-limited regions and are therefore sensitive to small changes in climate and management practices. However, their response will vary widely as a function of present and future moisture and temperature regimes. It is important to understand and predict the response of rangelands to multiple environmental stressors and competing human demands because of the critical socio-economic, agricultural, and ecological services these ecosystems provide. Process-based models are useful to quantify the separate and interactive response from climate and management in rangeland ecosystems. My long-term goal is to inform sustainable rangeland management under future climate conditions. This dissertation provides three types of contributions to grassland science and rangeland management: model/tool development, scientific understanding, and information for decision-making. Ultimately, this work provides the foundational tools and knowledge to further guide rangeland management to minimize negative environmental impacts, maintain economic productivity, and sustain long-term ecological viability.
Download or read book A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology written by Frank B. Golley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ecosystem concept--the idea that flora and fauna interact with the environment to form an ecological complex--has long been central to the public perception of ecology and to increasing awareness of environmental degradation. In this book an eminent ecologist explains the ecosystem concept, tracing its evolution, describing how numerous American and European researchers contributed to its evolution, and discussing the explosive growth of ecosystem studies. Golley surveys the development of the ecosystem concept in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses the coining of the term ecosystem by the English ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley in 1935. He then reviews how the American ecologist Raymond Lindeman applied the concept to a small lake in Minnesota and showed how the biota and the environment of the lake interacted through the exchange of energy. Golley describes how a seminal textbook on ecology written by Eugene P. Odum helped to popularize the ecosystem concept and how numerous other scientists investigated its principles and published their results. He relates how ecosystem studies dominated ecology in the 1960s and became a key element of the International Biological Program biome studies in the United States--a program aimed at "the betterment of mankind" specifically through conservation, human genetics, and improvements in the use of natural resources; how a study of watershed ecosystems in Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire, blazed new paths in ecosystem research by defining the limits of the system in a natural way; and how current research uses the ecosystem concept. Throughout Golley shows how the ecosystem concept has been shaped internationally by both developments in other disciplines and by personalities and politics.
Download or read book Range Ecosystem Research written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication outlines the direction we have chosen to take with rangeland research in the Forest Service, and explains the underlying philosophy.
Download or read book Ecosystems and Human Well being written by Joseph Alcamo and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decisionmakers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The book offers an overview of the project, describing the conceptual framework that is being used, defining its scope, and providing a baseline of understanding that all participants need to move forward. The Millennium Assessment focuses on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The program was launched by United National Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the primary assessment reports will be released by Island Press in 2005. Leading scientists from more than 100 nations are conducting the assessment, which can aid countries, regions, or companies by: providing a clear, scientific picture of the current sta
Download or read book Forest and Rangeland Soils of the United States Under Changing Conditions written by Richard V. Pouyat and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book synthesizes leading-edge science and management information about forest and rangeland soils of the United States. It offers ways to better understand changing conditions and their impacts on soils, and explores directions that positively affect the future of forest and rangeland soil health. This book outlines soil processes and identifies the research needed to manage forest and rangeland soils in the United States. Chapters give an overview of the state of forest and rangeland soils research in the Nation, including multi-decadal programs (chapter 1), then summarizes various human-caused and natural impacts and their effects on soil carbon, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and biological diversity (chapters 2–5). Other chapters look at the effects of changing conditions on forest soils in wetland and urban settings (chapters 6–7). Impacts include: climate change, severe wildfires, invasive species, pests and diseases, pollution, and land use change. Chapter 8 considers approaches to maintaining or regaining forest and rangeland soil health in the face of these varied impacts. Mapping, monitoring, and data sharing are discussed in chapter 9 as ways to leverage scientific and human resources to address soil health at scales from the landscape to the individual parcel (monitoring networks, data sharing Web sites, and educational soils-centered programs are tabulated in appendix B). Chapter 10 highlights opportunities for deepening our understanding of soils and for sustaining long-term ecosystem health and appendix C summarizes research needs. Nine regional summaries (appendix A) offer a more detailed look at forest and rangeland soils in the United States and its Affiliates.
Download or read book Seedling Ecology and Evolution written by Mary Allessio Leck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-18 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seedlings are highly sensitive to their environment. After seeds, they typically suffer the highest mortality of any life history stage. This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the seedling stage of the plant life cycle. It considers the importance of seedlings in plant communities; environmental factors with special impact on seedlings; the morphological and physiological diversity of seedlings including mycorrhizae; the relationship of the seedling with other life stages; seedling evolution; and seedlings in human altered ecosystems, including deserts, tropical rainforests, and habitat restoration projects. The diversity of seedlings is portrayed by including specialised groups like orchids, bromeliads, and parasitic and carnivorous plants. Discussions of physiology, morphology, evolution and ecology are brought together to focus on how and why seedlings are successful. This important text sets the stage for future research and is valuable to graduate students and researchers in plant ecology, botany, agriculture and conservation.
Download or read book Ecological Understanding written by Steward T.A. Pickett and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology is an historical science in which theories can be as difficult to test as they are to devise. This volume, intended for ecologists and evolutionary biologists, reviews ecological theories, and how they are generated, evaluated, and categorized. Synthesizing a vast and sometimes labyrinthine literature, this book is a useful entry into the scientific philosophy of ecology and natural history. The need for integration of the contributions to theory made by different disciplines is a central theme of this book. The authors demonstrate that only through such integration will advances in ecological theory be possible. Ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and other serious students of natural history will want this book.
Download or read book Monitoring Primer for Rangeland Watersheds written by Thomas E. Bedell and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rangeland Wildlife written by Paul R. Krausman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social Ecological Systems written by Reinette Biggs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds. Each chapter discusses the types of SES questions to which the particular methods are suited and the potential resources and skills required for their implementation, and provides practical examples of the application of the methods. In addition, the book contains a conceptual and practical introduction to SES research, a discussion of key gaps and frontiers in SES research methods, and a glossary of key terms in SES research. Contributions from 97 different authors, situated at SES research hubs in 16 countries around the world, including South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Australia, bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this book. The first book to provide a guide and introduction specifically focused on methods for studying SES, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainability science, environmental management, global environmental change studies and environmental governance. The book will also be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and professionals working at the science–policy interface in the environmental arena.
Download or read book Decision Support Systems for Ecosystem Management written by H. Todd Mowrer and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decision support system evaluations; ArcForest; ARGIS; CRBSUM; EMDS; FireBGC; FVS; GypsES; IMPLAN; INFORMS: KLEMS; LANDIS: LOKI: MAGIS: NED: RELMdss; SARA; SIMPPLLE; SNAP; SPECTRUM; TEAMS; Terra vision; UPEST; UTOOLS; Woodstock.
Download or read book Achieving Environmental Security written by P. H. Liotta and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecosystem services and human welfare / W.G. Kepner.
Download or read book Mapping Ecosystem Services written by Benjamin Burkhard and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The new book Mapping Ecosystem Services provides a comprehensive collection of theories, methods and practical applications of ecosystem services (ES) mapping, for the first time bringing together valuable knowledge and techniques from leading international experts in the field." (www.eurekalert.org).
Download or read book The State of the World s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture presents the first global assessment of biodiversity for food and agriculture worldwide. Biodiversity for food and agriculture is the diversity of plants, animals and micro-organisms at genetic, species and ecosystem levels, present in and around crop, livestock, forest and aquatic production systems. It is essential to the structure, functions and processes of these systems, to livelihoods and food security, and to the supply of a wide range of ecosystem services. It has been managed or influenced by farmers, livestock keepers, forest dwellers, fish farmers and fisherfolk for hundreds of generations. Prepared through a participatory, country-driven process, the report draws on information from 91 country reports to provide a description of the roles and importance of biodiversity for food and agriculture, the drivers of change affecting it and its current status and trends. It describes the state of efforts to promote the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity for food and agriculture, including through the development of supporting policies, legal frameworks, institutions and capacities. It concludes with a discussion of needs and challenges in the future management of biodiversity for food and agriculture. The report complements other global assessments prepared under the auspices of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which have focused on the state of genetic resources within particular sectors of food and agriculture.
