| A unit of Lasting Forests
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A Total Forest Management Plan
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The three major aspects of design are structure, dynamics, and relations. Structure is the topic of the form, the parts, the nominal things --- things often similar but different enough to demand comment, attention, or action. Simple differences are clear to everyone but for design, differences have be substantial enough to justify them being noted. They'll be in a computer system someday and someone will want to know what to do with them -- what values to use, what differences in decisions they might make. If no one knows one effect that adding (or removing or not removing, i.e., retaining) plant or animal PQ will have in a system, then it cannot be a part of design work. We are analyzing but here, only for the purpose of design, thus the reverse flow suggested in the above box.
We may quibble over whether every living thing, every rock stratum, every land form should be listed and included within a system being designed. We've tried and failed, even when we were "rich." That is enough of an excuse for not continuing to do so. We can make lists of plants and animals and "things" and lists are necessary for some computations such as diversity indices. Lists themselves have value to some people. They are thus a product of a rural system. Let us recognize this, make listing a separate activity, and the list itself a separate item in the structure of the system being designed. There are many years ahead before every item in such lists will be a computational feature in an operating system.
Dynamics and relations will be discussed later. The first major element of structure is System Context.
System Context
Land use planners, ecologists, and natural resource specialists of all types have struggled with the boundary problem, knowing and specifying the limits of a problem, knowing where to "draw the line." There is always in a design problem the questions of outside influences, how far to go, how much can we afford, how inclusive??? There is no satisfactory simple answer. The answer is that the bounds or the outside limits need to be seen as the context of the design, specified early, communicated frequently throughout the design work, and expansion entrances or nodes planned. This idea is no more complex than building a house with joints and support structures prepared to take the beams for the planned expansion. The system context within the rural system is always tentative. It may be expanded or contracted at designated times and points (e.g., budgetary). There must be specified period or system designers will suffer if a system context is expanded too rapidly or before they are prepared. System shrinkage can have similar effects, often lowering morale and causing the appearance of wasted prior work.
The system context is the named, marked, mapped or listed topic of work. It is always too large or too small. It has to be seen as tentative. It is an effort, a psychological state, that is unsettling for many people. There have to be limits to work, but they are temporary. The so-called "ecologist" calls a pond an ecosystem but immediately is confounded with whether precipitation and weather systems need to be included in that small simple system that is mapped. What are the pond limits? From how far might the nutrients and toxic substances in ground water be carried. Mark the pond edge at the high water mark? The low water mark? The moist soil limit? Include the watershed? The latter questsion expands the scope of designing a pond system far beyond "the pond." Perhaps only to the outer edge of the riparian zone around the pond? Specifying the system context is a difficult tentative human decision with temporal and related limits (budgets, staff, equipment, etc.)
For the typical county, the context for the rural system is all land and water within the legal county boundary and outside of any land or structures typically viewed as that of the town, village, or city. It is a volume and includes the space 1 mile above and 1 mile below the typically-mapped land surface and includes all of the conventially known biotic and abiotic structures,processes, and relations. Once "wildlands" was thought to have descriptive use but failed when tested by words and phrases such as " fallow fields," ," pastures and rangelands," " parks and picnic areas," " commercial campgrounds," and " aquaculture ponds," The word " rural," quite encompassing, may be excessively so, but seems appropriate as the context for designing practical systems operating within a county ... then expanding.
Structural Components
The US Forest Service staff has struggled with the features of importance and with which they must deal on public lands. I have expanded that list to include the important structural conponents needding working systems. The list is long, but it will not get shorter over time. Major decisions have hinged on the ability to understand and predict the changes in each component over time as a result of natural conditions or as a result of proposed managerrial action. The mappable list, with
implicit with each component:
Decisions
A design is a decision, one selected from many options or alternatives.
Typically, in environmental documents, three alternatives are presented -- a no-action alternative then several others. Within RRxwe suggest there are millions of options, especially because of different sequences in which actions may be taken. We propose to continue to develop the optimization procedures within the system further so that more comprehensive sets of actions may be optimally selected.
We typically propose three major feasible alternatives because of past patterns and because some docoments require such a list. We have done the screening and there are likely to be major differences among the alternative. They are not an equal distance apart in their "scores" or ability to achieve landowner objectives. While we argue for Alternative III, the grounds for doing so are very limited. In this planning system we have built into the processes those of the rational decision maker(s) who usually attempts to maximize some concept of total long-term expected benefits, of utility, and will attempt to do so at lowest long-term costs. The difficulties of doing so are enormous. We minimize them as we reluctantly suggest only three groups of options.
Example
Alternative I - Continuation - The work on the land is perceived to be very satisfactory. It is progressive and adequate. Improvements have been made and are expected to be in place.
The major efforts are to capture the work now underway, provide maps and documents so that work can be carried on or completed should there be personnel changes.
An adequate public relations program exists. Fire protection, recreation opportunities, grassland and tree management are underway. The deer herd is being harvested. Continual monitoring of the herd will allow the surplus to be taken and damage to vehicles, tree-reproduction, and landscaping to be avoided or reduced.
Without clear objectives, and awareness of rapidly changing objectives, a stable, small, active program is appropriate, hitting "hot spots" and emergencies and responding to needs where many of the public can be benefitted with small re-allocation of staff or budget.
The costs are estimated to be no more than 5% more than those of the past three years (exclusive of inflation).
Example
Alternative II - Intensive - The Intensive alternative is one that develops a strong, sound, working, comprehensive environmental system for the area. The system includes:
1. Clarifiying of objectives among areapersonnel, the local publics, and the general public. (Working for an improved R score.)
2. Expanding of the R* Guidance "documents" of the system.
3. Implementating of as many of the descriptions, herewith, of:
4. Developing of a baseline and biodiversity survey unit to establish the current conditions as a basis for comparing change per dollar invested in the programs for the area. This is in part a monitoring activity but includes the need to take corrective actions. It goes beyond monitoring and becomes adaptive management.
The costs are primarily in salary and support action for staff to implement work, largely with available resources. This work may be accomplished (implemented to a maintenance stage) in four years.
Example
Alternative III - Advanced - The advanced alternatives include all of these of Alternative II but implement them in 3 years and expand the concept to the remainder in R* Guidance. Additional components of the alternative are:
1. Developing a demonstration/training area
2. Intensive, expanded development of computer support for objectives formulation
3. Cooperative work with neighbors and leasees for concessions for bird watching, tours, horseback rides, and related activities.
4. Education units designed to influence educators or select groups of students so that the influence of the Station's programs goes beyond local children and their parents.
5. Using existing programs, hardware, and concepts to make the area a center of useful programs related to ecosystem management -- one with physical demonstrations of the sites and the results of using the software developed.
The Advanced Alternative is based on a system premise that most plans and most ecosystems have more things in common than they have that are unique. It seems highly cost effective to develop systems (such as the Lasting Forests system ) that can be used in many ways in may areas. We need not "start from scratch" on every forestry/ecological/environmental project. The Advanced Alternative develops extensive, practical work for the area, but, by design, makes it highly likely it can be used elsewhere. As improvements occur, maintenance costs of the current system decrease and recommendations improve.
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This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 13, 2001.