Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy

Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy
Author: Robert A. Smail
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2010-10
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1437928315

The continued conversion and development of forest land pose a serious threat to the ecosystem services derived from forested landscapes. There are unavoidable challenges involved in quantifying the threats from forest conversion and their related costs to human well-being: (1) most attempts to quantify the costs of forest conversion on ecosystem services will necessarily rely on specific ecological science that is often emerging, changing, or simply nonexistent; (2) given the interconnected nature of ecosystem products and processes, any attempt to quantify the effects of forest conversion must grapple with jointness in production; (3) the ecology and the human dimensions of ecosystems are highly specific to spatial-temporal circumstances.

Forest Fragmentation

Forest Fragmentation
Author: James Arthur Rochelle
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9789004113886

The book contains 15 chapters and provides an overview and synthesis of forest fragmentation and its influences on key ecological processes and vertebrate productivity. Land use practices and their effects on vertebrate populations and productivity are discussed and examples of several planning approaches to address landscape-level management effects are described.

Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World

Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World
Author: Christian C. Voigt
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2015-12-07
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 3319252208

This book focuses on central themes related to the conservation of bats. It details their response to land-use change and management practices, intensified urbanization and roost disturbance and loss. Increasing interactions between humans and bats as a result of hunting, disease relationships, occupation of human dwellings, and conflict over fruit crops are explored in depth. Finally, contributors highlight the roles that taxonomy, conservation networks and conservation psychology have to play in conserving this imperilled but vital taxon. With over 1300 species, bats are the second largest order of mammals, yet as the Anthropocene dawns, bat populations around the world are in decline. Greater understanding of the anthropogenic drivers of this decline and exploration of possible mitigation measures are urgently needed if we are to retain global bat diversity in the coming decades. This book brings together teams of international experts to provide a global review of current understanding and recommend directions for future research and mitigation.

Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy

Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy
Author: Robert A. Smail
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Cutover lands
ISBN: 9781506119854

The continued conversion and development of forest land pose a serious threat to the ecosystem services derived from forested landscapes. We argue that developing an understanding of the full range of consequences from forest conversion requires understanding the effects of such conversion on both components of ecosystem services: products and processes. However, there are unavoidable challenges involved in quantifying the threats from forest conversion and their related costs to human well-being. First, most attempts to quantify the costs of forest conversion on ecosystem services will necessarily rely on specific ecological science that is often emerging, changing, or simply nonexistent. For example, the role that many species play in ecosystem processes is poorly understood. Second, given the interconnected nature of ecosystem products and processes, any attempt to quantify the effects of forest conversion must grapple with jointness in production. For example, the cost of losing a species from forest conversion must account for that species' role as both (1) a product that directly contributes to human well-being, and (2) as a component in an ecosystem process. Finally, the ecology and the human dimensions of ecosystems are highly specific to spatial-temporal circumstances. Consequently, the effects of forest conversion in one spatial-temporal context are likely to be quite different than effects elsewhere.

Global Forest Fragmentation

Global Forest Fragmentation
Author: Chris J Kettle
Publisher: CABI
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2014-09-12
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1780642032

Forest fragmentation will inevitably continue over the coming years, especially in developing economies. This book provides a cutting edge review of the multi-disciplinary sciences related to studies of global forest fragmentation. It specifically addresses cross-cutting themes from both an ecological and a social sciences perspective. The ultimate goal of Global Forest Fragmentation is to provide a detailed scientific base to support future forest landscape management and planning to meet global environmental and societal needs.

State of the Art in Ethiopian Church Forests and Restoration Options

State of the Art in Ethiopian Church Forests and Restoration Options
Author: Mengistie Kindu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2022-01-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030866262

This book, with contributions from leading academics - and including reviews and case studies from Ethiopian Church forests - provides a valuable reference for advanced students and researchers interested in forest and other natural resource management, ecology and ecosystem services as well as restoration options. The book addresses various aspects including a general overview of Ethiopian church forests, the present role and future challenges of church forests. It also discusses their structure and diversity in the context of sustainability and discusses restoration options for surrounding landscapes, under consideration of the circumstances of the land and the needs of surrounding communities. The intended readership includes natural resource professionals in general as well as forestry professionals in particular (practitioners, policymakers, educators and researchers). The book will provide the reader with a good foundation for understanding Ethiopian forest resources and restoration options of degraded landscape.

Economics of Rural Land-Use Change

Economics of Rural Land-Use Change
Author: Kevin J. Boyle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351941801

Public concern over land management has never been greater. This book provides a broad overview of the economics of rural land-use change, drawing attention to the meaningful role economic analysis can play in resolving public concern and supporting future, pro-active land management strategies in rural areas. The book's breadth distinguishes it from other recent texts, as it jointly offers rigorous treatments of theoretical and empirical models of rural land-use change and practical discussions of applications and relevant methods. Chapters are specifically designed to demonstrate the types of land-use questions economic analysis can answer, the types of methods that might be employed to answer these questions, and the types of public policy decisions that may be supported by such analysis. The book makes a significant contribution to contemporary land-use research, highlighting the key methodological and public policy issues that will be central to future research on the economics of rural land-use change.

Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change

Tropical Forests and Global Atmospheric Change
Author: Yadvinder Malhi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2005-06-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0191524271

Tropical forests represent the world's most biodiverse ecosystems and play a key role in hydrology, carbon storage and exchange. Many of the human-induced pressures these regions are facing, e.g. fragmentation and deforestation, have been widely reported and well documented. However, there have been surprisingly few efforts to synthesize cutting-edge science in the area of tropical forest interaction with atmospheric change. At a time when our global atmosphere is undergoing a period of rapid change, both in terms of climate and in the cycling of essential elements such as carbon and nitrogen, a thorough and up-to-date analysis is now timely. This research level text, suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in plant ecology, tropical forestry, climate change science, and conservation biology, explores the vigorous contemporary debate as to how rapidly tropical forests may be affected by atmospheric change, and what this may mean for their future.

Managing the Spatial Configuration of Land

Managing the Spatial Configuration of Land
Author: David James Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2005
Genre: Fragmented landscapes
ISBN:

Habitat fragmentation has been widely studied in the biological literature and is considered a primary threat to biodiversity. However, there has been little research on land-use policies to reduce fragmentation. This dissertation focuses on two major research issues related to fragmentation policies. First, I develop an analytical model to analyze the optimal conservation strategy on a landscape with habitat fragmentation effects. Second, I develop an empirical methodology to quantify the economic costs of reducing fragmentation through the use of incentive-based land-use policies. A theoretical model of land use is developed to analyze the spatial configuration of landscapes when land quality is spatially heterogeneous and wildlife habitat is fragmented and socially valuable. When urban development is the primary cause of fragmentation, I show how spatial heterogeneity in amenities and household neighbor preferences affect the optimal landscape and the design of efficient land-use policies. When agriculture is the primary cause of fragmentation, I derive optimal conservation strategies for reducing fragmentation. I show that reforestation efforts should be targeted to the most fragmented landscapes with an aggregate share of forest equal to a threshold, defined by the ratio of the opportunity cost of conversion to the social value of core forest. A parcel-level econometric model of land-use change is developed and integrated with spatially-explicit landscape simulations to predict the empirical distribution of fragmentation outcomes under given market conditions and policy scenarios. I examine the effects of alternative policy designs on various measures of fragmentation and then quantify the costs of achieving spatial outcomes. I find that the costs of reducing forest fragmentation vary greatly with initial landscape conditions and that a simple uniform subsidy appears to perform well relative to more complicated spatially-targeted policies. In addition, my results suggest that initial landscape conditions, rather than the policy approach, should be the foremost consideration for wildlife managers deciding how to allocate a limited budget to conservation efforts.