Mrs. Dow Unit Four Chapter 11

1
Mrs. DowUnit FourChapter 11

• Sustaining Terrestrial Biodiversity
• Managing and protecting Ecosystems

2
Reintroducing Wolves to Yellowstone
11/25/2015
2
3
Case Study Reintroducing Wolves to
Yellowstone

• At one time the gray wolf ranged over most of
  North America
• 1850-1900- an 2 million wolves were shot,
  trapped and poisoned by ranchers, hunters, and
  government employees
• Trying to make the West and Great Plains safe for
  livestock and big game

4

• 1973 the ESA (Endangered Species Act) was passed
• Only 400-500 gray wolves remained in lower 48.
• Gray wolves an important keystone species
• They culled the herds of bison, elk and deer
• The number of bison and elk increased devastating
  the some of the vegetation, increased erosion and
  threatened the niches of other species
• 1995 wolves were reintroduced
• 2004 the number were up to 760 wolves
• downgraded them from endangered to threatened

5
Human impacts on terrestrial biodiversity 11.1

• We have degraded 50-83 of land surface
• Cleared 82 of temperate forests for farming
• Logged 95 of virgin forests
• 98 of tall prairie grassland has disappeared
• Extinction rate is 100-10,000x what is was prior
  to humans

6
Preservation of biodiversity

• Needed for . . .
• Goods services
• Scientific information
• Recreation
• Ecological services
• Valuing natural beauty
• Leaving capital for future generations

7
Conservation biology 11.2

• Conservation biology is a multidisciplinary
  science its goal is to use emergency responses
  to slow down the rate at which we are destroying
  and degrading the earth's biodiversity
• Identify hotspots- the most endangered and
  species-rich ecosystems
• Rapid assessment teams (RAT)
• Evaluate
• Make recommendations
• Take emergency actions

8

• Bioinformatics
• Applied science of managing, analyzing,
  communicating biological info
• Tools
• High-res digitized images
• DNA sequencing for identifying microorganisms

9
11.3 Public lands
National parks and preserves
National forests
(and Xs) National wildlife refuges
10
National parks and preserves
National forests
(and Xs) National wildlife refuges
11
Public lands in the U.S. 11.3

• Public lands help preserve biodiversity
• U.S. has set aside more land than any other
  nation
• More than a 1/3rd of the land in the US consist
  of publicly owned national forests, resource
  lands, parks, wildlife refuges and protected
  wilderness areas
• 73 of that is in Alaska
• National forests resource lands (USFS)
• Logging, mining, grazing, oil, gas, recreation
• National Wildlife Refuges (USFWS)
• Protected habitats breeding grounds
• May hunt, trap, fish, mine, log, graze, farm

12

• National Park System (NPS)
• Allows camping, hiking, sport fishing, boating,
  not hunting, mining or oil
• National Wilderness Preservation System
• Only recreational use

13
60
EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA
ASIA
30N
Tropic of Cancer
Atlantic Ocean
AFRICA
Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
150
90
60E
0
30W
90
120
150
0
SOUTH AMERICA
Indian Ocean
Tropic of Capricorn
AUSTRALIA
30S
Antarctic Circle
60
ANTARCTICA
Critical and endangered
Threatened
Stable or intact
Projected Status of Biodiversity 19982018
14
Controversy over using public lands for resources

• From an environmentalist approach . . .
• Protect biodiversity and habitats
• No subsidies for taking resources
• Compensation to public for use
• Extractors pay for damage
• Federal gvt gives billions yearly to private
  interests

15

• Developers extractors
• No federal funding for admin of land
• Cut old trees and replant
• Open land to drilling
• Dismantling NPS building theme parks
• Support 1872 Mining Law
• Repealing Endangered Species Act
• Decreasing wetlands

16
Managing sustaining forests 11.4

• 3 types
• 1. Old growth/frontier
• Not seriously disturbed by humans/natural
  disasters
• Land at less than market value
• Large amounts of diversity
• 22 of worlds forest
• Logging threatens 33

17

• 2. Second-growth
• Develop after human activities/natural forces
• Secondary succession
• 63 of worlds forest
• 3. Tree plantations/tree farms
• Replant clear-cut one species of tree in
  regular cycle
• 5 of worlds forest

18
Forest management

• Even-aged tree plantations
• Maintains trees about the same age size
• Replaces an old-growth forest
• Uneven-aged
• Variety of ages sizes
• Promotes diversity
• Selectively cut various aged trees
• Used for timber, wildlife, recreation

19
Old growth
Building roads into previously inaccessible
forests paves the way to their fragmentation,
destruction and degradation
20
(No Transcript)
21
Logging roads

• Increase erosion, sediment runoff, affect
  habitats, loss of biodiversity
• Expose forests to invasion by nonnative pests,
  disease
• Access to human pests (ticks)
• Disqualify land for protection as wilderness

22
Selective Cutting
23

• Selective cutting
• Intermediate aged/mature trees cut in small
  groups
• Reduces crowding, encourages growth of younger
  trees maintains a uneven-aged forest
• High grading
• Largest, best specimens cut
• Forest floor becomes warmer, drier, subject to
  erosion, fire

24
25
15
10
30
Years of growth
5
25
Cut 2
Cut 1
Shelterwood Cutting
26
Seed-Tree Cutting
27
Clear-Cutting
28
Uncut
Cut
Cut
Cut
Uncut
1 year ago
35 years ago
610 years ago
Strip Cutting
29
Three ways to harvest trees that need full to
moderate sunlight

• Shelterwood cutting
• Removes all mature trees in an area in two or
  three cuttings over a period of time
• Seed-tree cutting
• Removes nearly all trees but leaves a few
  seed-producing trees who would begin a new
  generation
• Clear cutting
• Every tree in one cutting

30
Trade-Offs
Clear-Cutting Forests
Advantages
Disadvantages
Higher timber yields Maximum economic return in
shortest time Can reforest with genetically
improved fast-growing trees Short time to
establish new stand of trees Needs less skill
and planning Best way to harvest
tree plantations Good for tree species needing
full or moderate sunlight for growth
Reduces biodiversity Disrupts ecosystem
processes Destroys and fragments some wildlife
habitats Leaves moderate to large
openings Increases soil erosion Increases
sediment water pollution and flooding when done
on steep slopes Eliminates most recreational
value for several decades
11/25/2015
30
31
Effects of deforestation

• Reduces biodiversity
• Change regional climate
• Destroys and fragments some wildlife habitats
• Increases soil erosion
• Emits carbon dioxide (global climate)
• Original world forest decreased by 20 to 50
• Mainly in tropics

32

• Temperate forest have increased from
  reforestation (secondary succession)
• Some tropics have been replanted

33
Forest resources management in U.S. 11.5

• 40 U.S. forests protected
• U.S. mainly losing old-growth second-growth

34
White pine blister rust
Sudden oak death
Pine shoot beetle
Beech bark disease
Hemlock wooly adelgid
35
Individuals Matter Butterfly in a Redwood
Tree

• Julia Butterfly Hill spent 2 years of her life
  on a small platform near the top of a giant
  redwood tree in California to protest the
  clear-cutting of forest of these ancient trees,
  some of them over 1,000 years old
• She lost her battle but persuaded Pacific lumber
  MAXXAM to save her tree called Luna and a 60-
  meter buffer zone around it.
• Someone seriously damaged it with a chain saw
  cables and steel plates have been used to
  preserve it.

36
(No Transcript)
37
(No Transcript)
38
Surface fire
39
Types of fires

• 1. Surface fires
• Burn underbrush, leaf litter, most animals
  survive
• Germinate some plants
• Can kill seedling but spare most mature trees and
  allow most wildlife to escape

40
Crown fire
41

• 2. Crown fires
• Hot leap from tree to tree
• More ground litter ? greater destruction
• Destroy most vegetation, kill wildlife, increase
  erosion
• 3. Ground fires
• Most common in peat bogs
• Go underground
• Hard to detect fight

42
Preventing forest fires

• Prescribed burns
• Logging leaves debris
• Goats clear area
• Goals
• Reduce ground-level fuel
• Clearing flammable vegetation around homes
• Fire lanes

43

• The Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) was launched
  in August 2002 by President Bush with the intent
  to reduce the risks severe wildfires pose to
  people, communities, and the environment.
• By protecting forests, woodlands, shrublands, and
  grasslands from unnaturally intensive and
  destructive fires

44
Healthy forest Initiative

• Congress passed law in 2003
• Timber companies are allowed to cut down
  economically valuable medium and large trees in
  71 of the countrys forest for 10 years
• In return for clearing away smaller fire prone
  trees and underbrush
• Exempts most thinning projects from environmental
  reviews and appeals

45
Controversy in national forests

• Timber companies want low prices
• Conservationists want less cutting
• Incentives have been given to FS for selling
  timber
• Reforesting does not include road building,
  overhead costs
• Recreation, hunting, fishing adds more money than
  cutting timber

46
Increase efficiency of wood consumption

• Construction
• Excess packaging, junk mail
• Paper recycling
• Reuse wooden shipping containers

47

• Use kenaf for packaging
• Paper can be made without trees.
• One acre of kenaf, a plant related to cotton,
  produces as much fibre in one year as an acre of
  yellow pine does in twenty.

48
Tropical deforestation 11.6

• Brazil
• 40 remaining rainforests
• Gone in 50 yrs.
• 450 tree species/2 house lots
• Loss of chemicals, storehouse for carbon

49
Rauvolfia
Rauvolfia sepentina, Southeast
Asia Tranquilizer, high blood pressure
medication
50
Foxglove
Digitalis purpurea, Europe Digitalis for heart
failure
51
Pacific yew
Taxus brevifolia, Pacific Northwest Ovarian
cancer
52
Cinchona
Cinchona ledogeriana, South America Quinine for
malaria treatment
53
Rosy periwinkle
Cathranthus roseus, Madagascar Hodgkin's
disease, lymphocytic leukemia
54
Neem tree
Azadirachta indica, India Treatment of many
diseases, insecticide, spermicide
55
Destroy tropical rainforest?

• Population growth poverty
• Gvt subsidies
• Poor given title to land they clear
• International companies encourage building,
  mining
• Ranchers move in after slashing/burning
  (deforestation makes land dry)

56
(No Transcript)
57
(No Transcript)
58
(No Transcript)
59
(No Transcript)
60
(No Transcript)
61
(No Transcript)
62
(No Transcript)
63
(No Transcript)
64
(No Transcript)
65
To reduce deforestation in rainforests

• Help settlers learn sustainability
• Debt for nature swaps
• Loggers harvest better
• Reforest
• Prevent illegal logging

66
Green belt movement

• Started in Kenya
• Wangari Maathai founded the green movement in
  1977
• Women's self-help group
• Establish tree nurseries, raise seedlings
• Goal to plant and raise a tree for each of the 32
  million people of Kenya
• 2003 50,000 members established 6,000 nurseries
  and planted more than 20 million trees

67
National Parks 11.7

• Established by gvts
• Some need help
• Loggers, miners, poachers
• Native species illegally moved
• Nonnative invade parks
• Too many cars off road vehicles
• Visitors expected urban facilities
• Rangers spend time on law enforcement not
  conservation

68
Solutions
National Parks

• Integrate plans for managing parks and nearby
  federal lands
• Add new parkland near threatened parks
• Buy private land inside parks
• Locate visitor paring outside parks and use
  shuttle buses for entering and touring heavily
  used parks
• Increase funds for park maintenance and repairs
• Survey wildlife in parks
• Raise entry fees for visitors and use funds for
  park management and maintenance
• Limit number of visitors to crowded park rangers
• Increase number and pay of park rangers
• Encourage volunteers to give visitor lectures and
  tours

69
Nature reserves 11.8

• Conservation approach
• Protect at least 20 of earths global systems
• Nature Conservancy (1951)
• Large private natural systems in 30 countries
• Wilderness Act (1964)
• 4.6 of land protected in U.S.

70
Caribbean Sea
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Pacific Ocean
Panama
Costa Rica eight mega reserves
71
Ecological restoration 11.9

• Restoring wetlands
• Replanting forests
• Reintroduce native species
• Removing nonnative species
• Removing dams

72
Endangered Natural Capital -25 hotspots
73
What can You do?

• Plant trees and take care of them
• Recycle paper and buy recyled paper products
• Buy wood and wood products made from trees that
  have been grown sustainably