Managing an arid ranch in the 21st century: New technologies for novel ecosystems
Brandon T. BestelmeyerSantiago A. UtsumiSarah E. McCordDawn M. BrowningLaura M. BurkettEmile EliasRick E. EstellJeffrey E. HerrickDarren K. JamesSheri SpiegalNicholas P. WebbJebediah C. Williamson
2
Citation
38
Reference
10
Related Paper
Citation Trend
Abstract:
Rates of ecosystem change are accelerating in rangelands, but development of technologies to detect and react to change is accelerating at the same time. New management frameworks, including novel ecosystems and Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) provide new ways of thinking about management strategies. We describe how we are integrating several digital tools and new management frameworks on the Jornada Experimental Range as an example to help land managers imagine how these tools might be applied in their contexts.Keywords:
Ecosystem Management
Emerging Technologies
Seventy-Five Years of Vegetation Treatments on Public Rangelands in the Great Basin of North America
Land treatments occurring over millions of hectares of public rangelands in the Great Basin over the last 75 years represent one of the largest vegetation manipulation and restoration efforts in the world. The ability to use legacy data from land treatments in adaptive management and ecological research has improved with the creation of the Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL), a spatially explicit database of land treatments conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The LTDL contains information on over 9,000 confirmed land treatments in the Great Basin, composed of seedings (58%), vegetation control treatments (24%), and other types of vegetation or soil manipulations (18%). The potential application of land treatment legacy data for adaptive management or for retrospective analyses of effects of land management actions on physical, hydrological, and ecological patterns and processes is considerable and just beginning to be realized.
Cite
Citations (110)
Ecosystem Management
Cite
Citations (434)
Droughts can have serious ecological and economic consequences and will pose an increasing challenge to rangeland users as the global climate is changing. Finding ways to reduce ecological and economic impacts of drought should thus be a major research thrust. Resilience, defined as the amount of perturbation a social or ecological system can absorb without shifting to a qualitatively different state, has emerged as a prominent concept in ecosystem ecology and more recently as a conceptual framework for understanding and managing complex social-ecological systems. This paper discusses the application and relevance of resilience to understanding and managing ecosystem change, and enhancing the capacity of land users to adapt to droughts. Drought can trigger vegetation change and factors such as grazing management can influence the likelihood of such transitions. Drought can cause differential mortality of perennial plants and this could provide an opportunity for rangeland restoration by opening up establishment sites for desirable species. The capacity of land users to cope with drought is influenced by the resilience of their agro-ecosystems, the diversity of livelihood options, access to resources and institutional support. By these criteria, current agricultural development approaches in South Africa, particularly in communal rangelands and areas of land reform, are unlikely to enhance land users’ resilience to drought and other perturbations.
Resilience
Cite
Citations (110)
Resilience
Cite
Citations (51)
Ecosystem Management
Resource Management
Natural Resource Management
Cite
Citations (13)
Land management is an important factor that affects ecosystem services provision. However, interactions between land management, ecological processes and ecosystem service provision are still not fully understood. Indicators can help to better understand these interactions and provide information for policy-makers to prioritize land management interventions. In this paper, we develop a framework for the systematic selection of indicators, to assess the link between land management and ecosystem services provision in a spatially explicit manner. Our framework distinguishes between ecosystem properties, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services. We tested the framework in a case study in The Netherlands. For the case study, we identified 12 properties indicators, 9 function indicators and 9 service indicators. The indicators were used to examine the effect of land management on food provision, air quality regulation and recreation opportunities. Land management was found to not only affect ecosystem properties, but also ecosystem functions and services directly. Several criteria were used to evaluate the usefulness of the selected indicators, including scalability, sensitivity to land management change, spatial explicitness, and portability. The results show that the proposed framework can be used to determine quantitative links between indicators, so that land management effects on ecosystem services provision can be modelled in a spatially explicit manner.
Ecosystem Management
Cite
Citations (1)
Rangeland management
Cite
Citations (20)
Ongoing conflicts over the management of western rangelands can be attributed in part to the lack of reliable information about current ecological conditions and their causes due, in turn, to insufficient monitoring. To meet the monitoring shortfall, land management agencies increasingly are enlisting permittees to monitor their grazing allotments. We surveyed grazing permittees in 5 Arizona counties and land management agency employees throughout Arizona to compare their attitudes toward permittee monitoring on public rangelands, the role of government in rangeland management, rangeland conditions in Arizona, and the credibility of information sources about rangelands. Permittees and agency employees differed in most of the attitudes measured by our survey. However, both populations agreed that permittees should participate in monitoring their allotments, and many respondents agreed with making permittee monitoring mandatory. Many respondents in both groups also agreed that collaboration can be beneficial. Joint monitoring, which can be considered a type of ‘‘joint fact-finding,’’ may help improve agency-permittee relationships and bridge the gap in attitudes and underlying values. Permittee-monitoring programs deserve careful evaluation to determine their impacts on social relationships, management decisions, and ecological conditions
Rangeland management
Public land
Cite
Citations (0)
Geo-environment,as the basic survival place for human beings,has natural connection with ecological environment of land.The integration of land eco- management and geo- environment is not only the need for integrated ecosystem management, but also the need for land and resource management.Besides,it agrees with the development of geology and land ecology. Presently,realizing the integration of land eco-management and geo-environment has institutional,human resources, technological and some other support.From the viewpoint of technical management,the integration of land eco- management and geo-environment is realized by integration of technical talents,information and business.
Ecosystem Management
Land information system
Natural Resource Management
Cite
Citations (0)
This report focuses on how ecosystem management will be implemented into public land management and how this may affect the permitting of mining operations in the western U.S. Numerous federal, state, and local agencies are considering ecosystem management as the preferred management alternative. Other sections discuss definitional problems, legal foundation for the system, activities of the federal land management agencies, activities within certain states, and finally the implications of the ecosystem management effort on mine permitting.
Ecosystem Management
Public land
Cite
Citations (0)