A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

of an Alternative Wildlife Resource Management

Study Aids - Key Concepts and Review

1. GIS is a popular abbreviation for geographic information system(s).
2. "Faunal space" includes all conventional habitat factors but also food, cover, change over time, and abiotic factors along with animals themselves (the caribou within the caribou herd; the herd is habitat or faunal space).
3. Home range is a function of animal weight/size and efficiency of collecting needed energy.
4. The wildlifer moves past overlaying maps to modeling within the pixel (or map cell or raster).
5. Water is critical -- with multiple sources and conservation - drink, eat, cellular, behavioral (restrict panting), conservative (e.g., dry feces).
6. Phenology is the study of biological sequences and timing of phenomena e.g., bud burst, leaf fall, gobbling.
7. Designing habitats is difficult and requires cost-effective use of knowledge to achieve stable faunal space needs for each life group.
8. Carrying capacity is a habitat (faunal space) phenomenon expressed in animal units.
9. Carrying capacity has many definitions. Consider the long one suggested in Giles (1978) and all factors.
10. Use (at least) "maximum number of animals an area will support on a sustained basis without destruction of habitat" or "the maximum residual population at which productivity declines to zero."
11. Plant vigor is lost in many plants at 60% use.
12. Land has area but also volume. Analyze area x average ht. of vegetation as a first approximation for comparisons of richness or density.
13. There are many measures of interspersion, an expression of pattern.
14. Juxtaposition implies both contiguity and an estimate of the quality of a condition for a life group.
15. Spatial diversity can be expressed as patchiness, or variance in distance between units, or Simpson index of areas or distances between centers of polygons.
16. "Landscape ecology" - perceived effects of patchiness and pattern on population occurrence or abundance.
17. Points and lines in the environment have zones of influence.
18. There are many ways to estimate the mean width of such zones (tracks, observations, radio telemetry, traps)
19. There are many types of cover.
20. "Landscape ecology" for the wildlifer is related best by contiguity, nearness, zones of influence, and edge length.
21. Edge length needs to be replaced by measures of the edge tunnel or volume.
22. Edge effect: "Carrying capacity in species of high type requirements and low radius varies directly with the interspersion of the types, which is proportional to the sum of the type peripheries." Such game is "edge effect." Leopold 1933:134.
23. A management "guild" is an enterprise working to produce profits from sophisticated single-species management.
24. "Ecosystem management" emerges from "new perspectives" and needs to be replaced by total system management including the 4 "E" themes or paradigms.
25. Pest management: replace IPM with integrated vertebrate pest damage management. Manage damage, not injury or the population.
26. Buffer species are alternative prey that take foraging pressure of predators off of game animals or other animals of interest.
27. Fence may be a management device to reduce damage. There are 13 "F" ways to manipulate succession (see Capper).
28. A "production function" is a succession curve, a series of estimated transitions or transition rates over time
29. In nature, conditions change in fairly predictable ways due to sequential developments.
30. The pathway can be change. Managers can set back or advance succession curves.
31. The succession curve is the most important process concept of this course.
32. Interspersion, etc. are modifiers of succession curve quality for animals.
33. By adding succession curves for small areas over a large area, total food or other faunal space characteristics over time can be achieved.
34. Once a level that is needed (of some characteristic of an area, e.g., food), then the level obtained can be subtracted from that desired. The difference (squared) is a good measure of system performance.
35. With an objective, curves may be started of the proper time and area.
36. The height of the curve is a function of the area.
37. The shape of the curve (slight alterations) can be adjusted for quality -- related to juxtaposition.

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Last revision July 20, 2000.