Chapter 12

Lecture Outline*

William P. Cunningham
University of Minnesota
Mary Ann Cunningham
Vassar College

*See PowerPoint Image Slides for all

figures and tables pre-inserted into
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Copyright © The McGraw­Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
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Biodiversity: Preserving Landscapes

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 Outline
• World Forests
 Deforestation

 Old Growth

 Harvest Methods

• Grasslands

• Parks and Preserves

 Terrestrial

 Marine

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 World Forests
• A forest is any area where trees cover more than
10% of the land.
 Most remaining forests are in tropical and boreal

regions.
 Savannas - trees cover less than 20% of ground

 Closed canopy - tree crowns cover most of

ground

• Highest rates of forest loss in Africa and South

America

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 World Forests
• Carbon sink for carbon dioxide

• Moisture contributes to rainfall.

• Old growth forests - cover a large enough area and

have been undisturbed by humans long enough
that trees can live out a natural life cycle and
ecological processes are normal
 Home to much of world’s biodiversity,

endangered species and indigenous people

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Major Forest Types

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 Forests Provide Products
• Wood and paper
 Developed countries provide less than half of

industrial wood, but 80% of consumption.

 Paper pulp is 1/5 of all wood consumption.

 Fuel accounts for 1/2 of global wood use.

 One quarter of world’s forests are managed for

wood production, much of it in single species

monoculture forestry.

• Successful reforestation plans in China, Korea

and Japan

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 Tropical Forests are Being Cleared
• Tropical forests occupy less than 10% of land
surface but contain half of all species.

• FAO estimates that 12.3 million ha are deforested

every yr, the equivalent of one football field every
second.

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 Causes of Deforestation
• Logging
 Building roads to remove trees also allows entry

to forest by farmers, miners, hunters.

• Conversion of forest to agriculture
 Accounts for 2/3 of destruction in tropics

 Shifting cultivation (“slash and burn”) is only

sustainable if populations are small. Repeated

cropping over a short time leads to permanent
deforestation.

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 Causes of Deforestation

• As forests are cleared, plant transpiration and

rainfall decrease.
• This leads to drought.
• Drought kills more vegetation.
• Fires become more numerous and extensive.
• More of the forest is lost.

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 Forest Protection
• Some places are being reforested (U.S. and China
have had greatest gains.)
• About 12% of world’s forests are protected.
 Guanacaste National Park, Costa Rica

 Chipko Andolan movement in India. Women

hugged trees to prevent logging and preserve

firewood for their families.
• Debt for Nature Swaps - conservation organizations
buy debt obligations, then offer to cancel the
debt if the debtor country protects biologically
important areas

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 Temperate Forests have Competing Uses
• U.S. Forest Service managed for “multiple uses”
but many were conflicting e.g. bird watching and
dirt biking.
• Old growth forests vs. logging
 Less than 10% of old growth forest remains in

U.S. and 80% of that is scheduled to be logged.

 Spotted owl vs. logging jobs

 Compromise forest management plan allows

some logging, but protects some prime habitat.

But may not be enough to save the salmon and
steelhead in northwestern rivers.
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Old Growth Forest
Temperate rainforest
and the spotted owl.
Only 2,000 remain in
the old growth forests
of the Pacific
Northwest.

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 Harvest Methods
• Clear cutting - every tree in a given area is cut
regardless of size
 Increases erosion and eliminates habitat

• Shelterwood harvesting - mature trees are removed

in a series of two or more cuts
• Strip cutting - all the trees in a narrow corridor are
harvested
• Selective cutting - only a small percentage of the
mature trees are taken in each 10 to 20 year
rotation

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 Harvesting
• Top photo shows clear
cutting (removal of all
trees) in Washington’s
Gifford Pinchot
National Forest.

• Bottom photo shows

selective harvesting.

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 Logging on Public Lands?
• Some are calling for an end to all logging on
public lands.
 Lands provide ecological services such as clean

water, rivers for fish, irrigation, recreation. Worth

$224 billion.
 Federal government builds roads, manages

forests, fights fires and then sells the timber to

logging companies for less than their costs. This
is a subsidy for the logging industry. Worth $4
billion.

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 Logging on Public Lands?
• Timber companies claim logging produces jobs,
supports rural communities, keeps forests healthy.

• Roads on public lands are another controversy.

Economists argue it opens up land for motorized
recreation and industrial uses. Wildlife supporters
see it as disruptive.

• Clinton protected 23.7 million ha of wilderness from

roads; Bush overturned this and ordered expedited
logging and mining.
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Fire Management

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 Fire Management
• U.S. adopted a policy of aggressive fire control in
the 1930s.
• Recent studies indicate many biological
communities are fire-adapted and require periodic
burning for regeneration.
• Eliminating fires has caused woody debris to
accumulate over the years. Fires are now larger
and more severe.
• 40 million Americans now live in areas of high
wildfire risk.

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 Ecosystem Management
• Ecosystem management attempts to integrate
sustainable ecological, economic, and social goals
in a unified systems approach.
 Managing across whole landscapes over

ecological time scales

 Considering human needs and promoting

sustainable economic development

 Maintaining biological diversity and ecosystem

processes

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 Ecosystem Management continued
 Utilizing cooperative institutional arrangements
 Generating meaningful stakeholder and public
involvement and facilitating collective decision
making
 Adapting management over time based on
conscious experimentation and routine
monitoring.

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 Grasslands
• Occupy about 1/4 of world’s land surface
• Frequently converted to cropland, urban areas, or
other human use
• More threatened plants in rangelands than in any
other American biome
• Can be used sustainably
 Pastoralists herd their animals to adjust to

variations in rainfall and seasonal conditions.

• Often overgrazed leading to desertification

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 Overgrazing
• 75% of rangelands in the world are degraded; one-
third of that is due to overgrazing.
• 55% of U.S. public lands are in poor or very poor
condition.
• Grazing fees charged for use of public lands are
below market value and represent a hidden subsidy
to ranchers.
• Ranchers claim that without a viable ranch
economy, western lands would be further
subdivided.

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 New Grazing Methods
• When cattle graze freely, they eat the tender
grasses leaving the tough species to gradually
dominate the landscape.
• Rotational grazing confines animals to a small area
for a day or two before shifting them to a new
location.
• Some plant communities (e.g. desert Southwest)
cannot tolerate grazing.
• Can raise wild species such as bison, which forage
more efficiently and fend off predators, diseases
and pests better than cattle
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Rangeland Soil Degradation

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Rotational Grazing
• Intensive rotational
grazing encloses
livestock in a small
area for a short time
within a movable
electric fence to force
them to eat vegetation
evenly and fertilize the
area evenly.

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 Parks and Preserves
• 12% of Earth’s land
area is protected.
• Categories of
protection are shown in
Table 12.2. They range
from wilderness in
which little human
impact is permitted to
areas of multiple use
such as recreation
areas.

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 Parks and Preserves
• In the developing world, some parks exist only on
paper because they do not have money for staff
and management.

• Brazil has the largest protected area. With more

than 25% of the world’s tropical forests, Brazil is
especially important to biodiversity.

• Some biomes are well represented in nature

preserves, while others are underprotected.

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 Preserves Not Safe from Exploitation
• Excessive stock grazing
• Dam building
• Oil drilling
• Mining
• Logging
• Coral reefs damaged by dynamite fishing
• Hunting; eggs from endangered sea turtles are
taken by hunters
• Overuse by the public

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Overuse of National Parks in U.S.
• Entertainment trumped
nature protection.
• Fire suppression
resulted in large fires.
• Traffic congestion
• Surrounding areas
clear cut or mined
• Air pollution and smog
• Parks are profitable,
but do not get to keep
the money they
generate.
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 World Conservation Strategy
• Developed by the IUCN

• Has 3 objectives:
 Maintain essential ecological processes and life

support systems
 Preserve genetic diversity essential to improving

cultivated plants and domestic animals

 Ensure that utilization of wild species and

ecosystems is sustainable.

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 Marine Ecosystems Need Protection
• Global fish stocks are becoming depleted and
biologists are calling for protected areas where
species can be sheltered.
 20% of nearshore territory should be marine

refuge area.
 Refuge can replenish nearby areas.

• Coral reefs are threatened by rising temperatures,

destructive fishing, coral mining and sediment
runoff.
 If conditions persist, all will be gone in 50 years.

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 Marine Ecosystems Need Protection
• Australia has the
largest marine reserve
in the Great Barrier
Reef (photo at right).
The U.S. has the
Northwest Hawaiian
Islands National
Monument.

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 Conservation and Economic Development
• Struggle to save ecosystems cannot be divorced
from struggle to meet human needs.
 Ecotourism - tourism that is ecologically and

socially sustainable
 Native people have valuable ecological

knowledge that can be used in ecosystem

management.
 UNESCO initiated “Man and Biosphere” program

(MAB) calling for the establishment of biosphere

reserves, protected areas divided into zones with
different purposes.

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A Model Biosphere Reserve

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Size and Design of Nature Preserves
• SLOSS debate - Is it
better to have single
large or several small
reserves?
• Edge effects
• Corridors of natural
habitat essential

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 Size and Design of Nature Preserves
• One of the reasons that large preserves are
considered better than small reserves is that they
have more core habitat, area deep within the
interior of the habitat that has better conditions for
specialized species.
 As human disturbance fragments the ecosystem,

habitat is broken into increasingly isolated

islands with less core and more edge, supporting
fewer species.

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 Landscape Ecology
• Landscape ecology - science that examines the
relationship between spatial patterns and ecological
processes such as species movement or survival

• Variables:
 Habitat size

 Shape

 Relative amount of core and edge

 Kinds of land cover surrounding habitat

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How Small Can a Habitat Be?

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