Static Reserves Research Articles

LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT USING HISTORICAL FIRE REGIMES: BLUE RIVER, OREGON

Landscapes administered for timber production by the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s-1980s were managed with dispersed patch clear- cutting, and then briefly in the late 1980s with aggregated patch clear-cutting. In the late 1990s, use of historical landscape patterns and disturbance regimes as a guide for landscape management has emerged as an alternative to the static reserves and standard matrix pre- scriptions in the Northwest Forest Plan. Use of historical information to guide management recognizes the dynamic and variable character of the landscape and may offer an improved ability to meet ecosystem management objectives. We describe a landscape management plan based in part on interpretations of historical disturbance regimes. The plan contains a reserve system and other landscape areas where three distinct types of timber harvest are prescribed. Timber harvest prescriptions approx- imate the frequency, severity, and spatial extent of past fires. Future harvest blocks are mapped and used to project forest patterns 200 yr forward and to map resulting landscape structure. This plan is compared with an alternative plan for the same area based on the extensive reserves and prescriptions for matrix lands in the Northwest Forest Plan. The management approach based on historical patterns produced more late-successional habitat (71% vs. 59%), more overstory structure in young stands (overstory canopy cover of 15-50% vs. 15%), larger patches (mean patch size of 48 vs. 26 ha), and less edge between young and old forest (edge density of 19 vs. 37 m/ha). While landscape structures resulting from both plans are historically unprecedented, we feel that landscape management plans incorporating key aspects of ecosystem history and variability may pose less risk to native species and ecological processes.

Future Energy Resources - An Overview

Abstract The present period marks a turning point in OHT utilization of energy in which we will shortly see the maturation of the petroleum and natural gas consumption patterns and the emergence of a new energy form, namely nuclear energy. In Order to put this displacement of one energy form by another into the proper perspective it is important to realize that this has happened twice before in the last 100 years, and that the modern industrial society has an enormous capacity to adapt to such changes. Furthermore, our potential energy resources, whether measured in terms of the static reserves life index or in terms of an exponential reserve index, are probably greater now than at any previous time since tire beginning of the industrial revolution. Analysis of past consumption and discovery patterns is used to substantiate this claim. In the transition period, in which a particular energy reserves such as oil or natural gas may become scarce regionally, public policy must recognize the intergenerational externality caused by the usage of a depleting resources. Measure to assure security of supply of energy are suggested. Introduction ANY DISCUSSION of energy resources or, for that matter, any other kind of non-renewable natural resource involves questions not only of technology and economics, but also of social and political value systems. Hence, this paper, in addition to having technological and economic components, will also have an ideological component. There are two extreme views on non-renewable resources the essentially gloomy view of the Malthusian camp who foresee disaster unless we change our ways, and the more optimistic view of the economic determinists who believe that the normal market mechanism together with expected technological progress will keep our problems at a manageable level. The modern Malthusians are perhaps best typified by the Club of Rome, who sponsored Professor Meadows' study on "The Limits of Growth"(1). In accordance with this view, both population and industrial capacity tend to grow exponentially, putting pressure on scarce natural resources, on arable land and on the capacity of the environment to absorb pollution. The standard scenario is for population and capital to overshoot the limits imposed by finite resources, and to subsequently collapse. The question of limits resolves ultimately to a consideration of energy supply – because with abundant energy, the other material resources can be recycled and pollution can be abated to desired levels. The economic determinists and the technological optimists believe that the market system, despite all its imperfection, will allocate sufficient capital, technology and labour to alleviate the shortage of any commodity, including energy. They further believe that the growth of population and capital will trigger negative feedback mechanisms which will ultimately stabilize these quantities, particularly in societies where there exists a system of pluralistic, informed, decentralized decision-making, as is true of western democracies. Our position is an intermediate one, with perhaps a bias toward the optimists.