Natural Resources IV Part 1: Land

Lecture 09a

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Unit Organization:

• Land Management
• Preserves
• Preserve Design
• Urban Management

Reading:

Textbook: Chapters 12 & 13

Ancillary Reading:

Land Management

The idea of land management is a complex set of practices intended to affect the value of land, whether privately or publicly owned

• Management may mean optimizing or maximizing the land's value with respect to several uses for the land including
  • Agricultural Production
  • Mineral Extraction
  • Ecosystem Services
  • Recreation
  • Conservation of Natural Capital
• In the US, all land is owned, either by the government or by private individuals (some of whom, according the Supreme Court, may resemble corporate entities but are really individual citizens)

Government Land

The federal government is the largest land owner (about 31% of the total)

• Much of it is in the western states
• Much of it is mountainous and arid  (20% of federal land is in NV, AZ and UT) or mountainous and frozen (35% of federal land is in Alaska)

The states own about 9%

Government owned lands are used for:

• Office space
• military and militia bases
• parks, reserves, wilderness areas
• leased to private individuals or corporations for commercial exploitation
• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Mining

Stewardship

Many groups interested in land management promote the idea of stewardship

• Stewardship, when used in this context, is an ethic which seeks to maximize the value of something indefinitely. 
  • Value here is not fungible but that value specifically linked to the resource being stewarded
  • Stewardship would never involve harvesting all of the blue whales now and investing the money in other enterprises, even if that would maximize monetary return, as the return from those monies would not come from future harvests of blue whale, the resource being stewarded
• Thus, good stewardship is not always consistent with good business

Public Land Management

Although there are many ideas on how best to manage public lands, the differences can be summed up by comparing two schools of thought:

• Preservation - minimum current use of natural capital, maximum preservation of future value, leaving wilderness as wilderness
• Conservation - exploitation of public lands' natural capital
  • Conservationist philosophy has dominated in the public forum and in the national and state legislatures
    • Conservationist practices have generated lots of wealth but there are two aspects of the wealth generated that are receiving greater attention today than in the recent past
      • Much damage has occurred to the lands being used
        • Overgrazing
        • Abandoned Mines
        • Reduction of both old-growth forest and total forest area
      • Wealth generation has not always been in the public good due to direct and indirect subsidies from public funds
        • Waste is generated by land users, waste cleanup is often paid for by public funds
        • Access to the resources on public lands is often far less expensive than similar access on private lands (for ranching, mining and logging rights)
          • Grazing rights are often far less than the market would bear (mineral rights and timber rights are also undervalued)
        • Federal rules allow a rancher to get a mortgage on the value of their grazing permits, which forces government officials to consider the possiblilty of forecloseures on ranchers personal property when making decsions about the uses of federal lands (the value of these loans is over 1/2 billion dollars)
        • The persistence of these subsidies are due to organized opposition from the western states, where much of the wealth is generated but opposition to the subsidies comes from the more populous eastern states, which pay a disproportionately large part of the cost of the subsidies

NEPA and the EIS

• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 is the fundamental law regulating environmental protection of federal lands
  • Requires all "major" federal actions involving those lands be reviewed for environmental impacts before proceeding
  • A component of the review process is the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which is supposed to be a science-based assessment of the benefits and impacts of the proposed project
• Many states have enacted similar statutes which govern protection of state-owned land and state-initiated projects

Private Land Management

• Although many governments world-wide have set aside lands for either conservation or preservation, public lands will not be enough
  • Preservation of majority of species requires at least 10% of habitat for each biome (14 are officially recognized by the IUCN)
    • Currently, 11.6% is protected, which looks good but actually fails to protect 10% of each biome
    • Antarctica accounts for 5.5% of all protected lands, leaving only 6% for protection of most species
    • Much of the remaining protected land is either desert, mountain or other land with little commercial value
    • Much of the protected land is poorly managed (due to lack of resources allocated by impoverished governments or to political instability)
    • Much protected land is fragmented and actually preserves less of the core habitat than the actual acreage preserved
  • So, some private lands must be preserved if we are to preserve a majority of species
• Methods for preserving private lands:
• Limiting ownership rights
  • The Endangered Species Act may limit use of privately held lands in order to preserve habitat for endangered species
  • Such regulations must balance the historical rights of land owners with demonstrable public good
  • Often compensation (usually monetary) is offered by the regulations in lieu of land owner rights
• NGO (Non-governmental Organization) purchase of lands for preservation
  • Nature Conservancy is a good example - members have donated sufficient money to purchase and preserve 15,000,000 acres in the US
    • The organization does  not, as a rule, buy lands in other countries but seeks partnerships with governments to help them preserve land)
  • Started in US in 1951 but works in 30+ countries and claims to have protected 120,000,000 acres of land and 5,000 mi of rivers worldwide and is known as one of the most efficient of all charitable organizations
    • The NC buys land selectively for its environmental value (high diversity, rarity of the habitat, corridor between fragments, etc.)
• Conservation Easements - land owners can sign a CE, which prevents certain uses of the land and permits others (like living on the land, some forms of agriculture)
  • Conservation Easements, once in force, remain in force as  long as the land is privately owned, even when sold to other private individuals (sale or confiscation by the government breaks the easement)
  • Conservation Easements often come with tax benefits for the owners of the land
  • The Nature Conservancy sometimes buys lands, signs a conservation easement, and then resells the land to private individuals, which allows the organization to reuse its funds multiple times

Preserves

National Park System

• Yellowstone first park (1872) and the system has grown since
• Now includes parks, rivers, ruins, battlefields, monuments, homes, etc.
  • 84,400,000+ acres
  • 3% is privately owned
  • Largest is Wrangell-St. Elias NP in Alaska (16% of total park system area)
  • Smallest is Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Philadelphia, PA (0.02 acres)
• Park recreational use has skyrocketed, which has resulted in two separate economic demands on the system
  • Maintaining the park services in existing parks
  • Creating new parks to relieve the pressure of increased use in existing parks
• Park funding, which has taken a precipitous decline since the 2008 fiscal crisis, is skewed toward the second demand
  • It is easier to get funds for a new monument or park rather than get funding for operating costs, even though new parks mean increased operating costs
• Suggested solutions:
  • Removing parks from the system (if under utilized or if there is local support for their maintenance)
  • Increasing revenue from users
  • Limiting use to minimize operating cost
  • Restoring Federal Funding

Wilderness and Multi-Use as part of the National Park System

• By 1900, Conservationist philosophy had come to dominate policy about public lands
  • This gave rise to the doctrine of Multi-use Management of public lands
  • Multi-use management seeks to balance all uses to maximize total benefit from public lands
• 1964 Wilderness Act allowed public lands to be set aside as wilderness
  • Due to degradation of natural capital on public lands, Preservationist approaches began to attract adherents and in 1964, the Wilderness Act was enacted in order to preserve some public lands
  • Lands designated as wilderness are not Multi-use Lands
  • No permanent structures, no roads, no commercial use, no motorized vehicles
• Now 757 wilderness areas totaling 109,501,440 acres (California is 101,571,840 acres)
  • Arizona, California, Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Washington and Oregon have the most wilderness
  • All of Tennessee's wilderness areas are near the TN-NC border and are relatively small
  • Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Iowa,  Kansas, and Maryland have none (New Jersey has wilderness - The Brigantine (now the Edwin B Forsythe) National Wildlife Refuge
    • (side note - the acre was once related to how much land a team of oxen could plow in a day but is now related to the surveyors use of the square mile as a basic unit for the original surveys of newly acquired US territories.  Subdividing the square mile by successive halvings of the sides of the square - 4 parcels (first halving), then halve each of the parcels and get 16 parcels of land, each of 40 acres - thus, each square mile is 640 acres [40 x 16] - The Homestead Act of 1862 [inspired by the Free Soil movement] granted title to a section [160 acres, 1/4th sq. mi.] to settlers who improved the land and lived on it for 5 years - Between 1862 and 1934, 270,000,000 acres were homesteaded by 1,600.000 grantees [10% of all the US] - the acre is the reason for the use of "40" in the expressions "the back 40" and "40 acres and a mule")
• Often local opposition to the designation, as it may mean some current uses of the land become prohibited
  • Perceived economic loss is usually claimed but studies have shown little impact

National Forests and National Grasslands

National Forest Service administers both, but grassland acreages are typically 1/10 the acreage of a typical national forest

Forest system created  by the Land Revision act of 1981 to protect a watershed that supplied water to Los Angeles, CA

The grassland system was created in 1937 as part of the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, which, in addition to setting up a credit system to help tenant farmers buy the land they farmed, allowed the federal government to acquire and rehabilitate damaged lands

About 1/2 of all of the commercially valuable wood is found in the National Forest system (commercial use is permitted on National Forest land but not in National Parks)

• Multi-use of these forests and grasslands leads to conflicting priorities
  • Uses of the systems include
    • Timber Harvesting
    • Grazing
    • Water Storage and Purification
    • Wildlife Preservation
    • Recreation
  • All uses can't be maximized or optimized at once
    • Logging may reduce value as wildlife refuge and for recreation
    • Grazing or logging may reduce amount and quality of water available
    • Loss of logging or grazing rights may impact local economies
  • Conservation vs. Preservation
    • Preservation is more difficult for dedicated multi-use lands, as a decision to preserve land today can be reversed tomorrow but clear cutting an old growth forest or removing the top of a mountain as part of a surface mine that is done today can't be reversed tomorrow
  • As the Forest Service spends more on building roads and maintaining recently cut forests than it collects from logging leases, the public subsidizes the timber industry
• There are also controversies over methodology
  • Clear Cutting (Even-Age Forest Management is the euphemism)
    • Cutting and removal of all valuable timber at one time
    • Replanting of selected (often just 1) species (essentially turning the forest into a kind of field crop)
    • Benefits of clear cutting
      • Maximizes revenue at time of harvest per acre of land leased
    • Costs
      • Increases soil erosion and can silt up streams
      • Extensive road network needed (roads cause more erosion, fragment the habitat, and encourage access to core habitat)
      • Ugly
      • Large stands of trees of the same species and age (often genetically similar as well) can promote disease and insect pest outbreaks and cause catastrophic tree loss
        • If one tree in the stand is at risk, all are at risk
  • Selective Cutting (Uneven-age Forest Management)
    • More costly per tree harvested
    • Avoids many of the other costs (or minimizes them)
• Fire, Timber Harvest, and Forests
  • Wildfire management has become more and more important (see Lecture 4 for information about wildfires)
  • Controversy has arisen over the approach to wildfires (are they a natural event or a tragic human disaster, or both?) and how to manage them
    • Bush administration took two controversial steps
      • Launching the Healthy Forest Initiative in 2002
        • Gave loggers access to burned areas to remove dead trees
        • Gave administrators of each forest the power to favor local priorities and ignore wildlife preservation concerns when making wildfire prevention policy for the lands they administer
          • Often, the result of the policy is that loggers are allowed to cut trees in the effort to reduce fuel for fires
        • Environmental groups have criticized both aspects of the initiative
          • They claim that there is little evidence that logging is either the best or even an effective means of fire control
          • They have also pointed out the potential for conflicts of interest as forest administrators sometimes take jobs with the same logging companies to which they have given logging permits
      • Reversing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (promulgated during the Clinton administration) that prevented road building in wilderness areas
        • The reversal gave states the power to build roads for state purposes on land held in trust for all US citizens, not just state residents
    • Congress passed the Federal Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement Act (FLAME Act) in 2009 in order to find a compromise solution acceptable to all stakeholders

Marine Reserves

• Protection of marine resources through the establishment of marine reserves is a more recent development than protection of terrestrial resources through the use of preserves
  • The ocean has traditionally been treated as a commons, where all nations may take resources
    • Fishery collapses have lead to treaties and treaty organizations tasked with setting and monitoring marine resource extraction
  • Traditionally, all nations had jurisdiction over coastal waters within 3 nautical miles (= 1.15 mi or 1.85 km) of their coastline
    • Set by practical considerations when proposed (the distance offshore a shore-based cannon could reach)
    • It had become obsolete by the mid 1900's and some countries were claiming much wider offshore territories
  • United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982, in effect in 1994, currently 160 nations are signatories)
    • Establishes a 12 (22 km) nautical mile territorial right for all nations, and sets up additional zones
      • 12 nautical mile "contiguous zone" outside of the territorial zone for problems with customs, immigration, taxation and pollution that originate within the territorial zone
      • 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone giving control of marine resources to the adjacent country (often sets fishing rights) but does allow navigation and overflight by all nations
      • The EEZ can be extended to the edge of the continental shelf (not more than 350 nautical miles or 100 nautical miles past the depth of 2,500 m) but it protects only mineral and non-living resources (oil and gas, usually)
    • Also sets up many organizations to monitor and regulate marine resources
• Marine Protected Areas
  • International program, administered by the IUCN, has several types of MPAs
    • Almost always multi-use and often not very effective as means of conservation (only 0.01% of ocean is a no-fishing zone)
  • 5,880+ marine protected areas (2010) covering only about 1.2% of the ocean's surface
    • Chagos Archipelago is the largest at 250,000 sq mi (= a square with 500 mile sides)
  • Yellow Tang (aquarium fish often captured from the wild) - first fish to demonstrate that marine reserves have wide benefits (larvae from marine reserve drifted 100 km and re-stocked a reef depleted by overfishing)
  • In the US, most MPA's are due to state action, not federal
    • National Marine Sanctuary Program (legislation enacted in 1972)
      • 13 sanctuaries and 1 national monument have been designated so far (nothing since 2000) and are administered by NOAA
      • Most are for habitat protection (coral reefs are popular) and 2 are for shipwrecks (the monitor, where it sank off of Cape Hatteras (NC), and a shipwreck cluster in Lake Huron

Preserve Design

Which land to preserve

• Historically, the US has chosen spectacular landscapes far from population centers and of low commercial and agricultural value for its national parks
• Other considerations have emerged since then and the trend has been to switch away from protecting only unique habitat to protection some of all habitats:
• Protection of species (Europe chose to protect habitat of large game animals)
• Protection of unique habitats
  • This was often done through the use of Umbrella Species - large, charismatic species that would ensure the protection of other less charismatic species sharing the same habitat
  • Biogeographers mapped diversity and, from such maps, Hot Spots (areas of unusually great biodiversity) could be designated and protected
    • Hot Spots are identified by
      • The number of endemic species
      • The degree of habitat loss in the hot spot
    • 34 high priority hot spots have been identified with at least 1,500 endemic species (plants, mammals, and amphibians combined) and 70% habitat loss
      • The total area for all hot spots is 1.4% of land area
      • Encompass 75% of threatened species (plant, mammal, and amphibian)
      • Encompass 50% of all know plant species
      • Encompass 42% of all known mammal species
    • Hot spots for different types of organisms do not necessarily coincide (birds vs plants)
      • Hotspots for biodiversity are congruent with hotspots for human languages, which are disappearing at a greater rate than species
• Protection of all biomes
  • As evidence of degradation accumulates for all biomes, it becomes clear that protection must also be extended to all biomes

Desgin of Preserves

• Shape of the Preserve
  • Should minimize edge effects to maximize the amount of core habitat protected
    • A circle has the least % of its area affected by edge effects and the % increases as the shape departs from circularity
  • Fragments must be interconnected by corridors sufficient to allow migration
  • Buffer zones can minimize contact between core species and human habitat
    • Buffer zones may be mixed use areas while core is wilderness
• Size of Preserve
  • Large mammals and birds may require large preserves
  • If that is impossible, then networks of fragments with corridors may be the only viable alternative

Sustainable Management

Many hot spots are already home to many people and often their standard of living puts them at risk of poverty, disease, and exploitation

• Establishment of preserves that do not balance the conservation of biodiversity with the needs of those living in the hot spots is both ineffective and indefensible
• Sustainable Management is the set of practices which seeks to manage preserves both for conservation and for development of local populations
  • The strategy is usually to generate jobs and economic value from the preserve for local populations
    • Management and Research jobs (governmental)
    • Ecotourism
    • Sustainable Harvest of wild plants and animals
      • Keeping economic value of harvest local can be difficult
    • Bioprospecting for pharmaceuticals has generated lots of wealth but little for local populations
      • History has shown that little value has accrued to the populations where the new pharmaceutical originated, although great value has accrued where the technology existed to develop the new drug
• Convention on Biological Diversity (http://www.cbd.int)
  • Treaty signed by over 150 countries  (the US signed it but the Senate has not ratified it)
  • Promotes conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of wild organisms, and fair sharing of benefits arising from genetic discoveries
  • Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (2010) adopted to set up a legal framework for giving all access to genetic resources and for sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources
    • Too soon to evaluate effect of the agreement

Urban Management

Worldwide, the trend is toward an ever-growing proportion of humanity living in cities

• Urbanization went over 50% by 2009
• USA - 82%, Canada - 81%, United Kingdom - 80%
• The most urbanized large country?  Australia at 90% (not consistent with your image of Crocodile Dundee and the Outback?) is the most urbanized large country (not including nation-cities like Singapore, small desert countries like Kuwait, and some small European countries like Belgium and Luxembourg)

Causes of urbanization:

• Rural flight
• Industrialization
• Urban Population Growth

Results of Urbanization

• Growth of urban landscape
  • Development of suburban area
  • Many cities have seen the suburbs grow in both acreage and population while the city declines in population (Suburban Sprawl)
  • Suburbs tend to be single-story residences, while multi-story residences are more common in city centers
• Reasons for sprawl in the US
  • Inexpensive gasoline and public expenditures on transportation geared toward road building rather than public transportation
  • Desire for personal space (love your lawn)
  • Escape from perceived dangers of city living
  • Inexpensive land and housing (always new construction on the fringe of suburb)
  • Attitude that a change from an agricultural field or pasture to a residential development necessarily constitutes a public good (usually called "progress")

Effects of sprawl

• Increased reliance on individual transportation vs. public (with resulting increase in per capita energy use)
• Increased sq. footage or residences and acreage per resident (also with increased per capita energy use)
• Fragmentation of economic and environmental systems (earn money in city, pay taxes in suburbs, each suburb has its own sewage and garbage system, etc.) with concurrent increase in energy use per capita
• Decrease in wildlife habitat (although varmints like deer and possum seem to do well)
• Decrease in resident's physical fitness (mainly due to more driving and less walking)
• Decrease in social connectedness for the average individual
• Reduced access to social services (especially important for those who must rely on public transportation: the elderly, those confined to bed or wheelchair, those who cannot afford cars)
• Increase in Sealed Surface Area
  • This is the area covered by buildings, concrete, asphalt, and other materials that will not allow water to percolate into the soil
  • This means the water will become run-off, which can result in flash flooding, a lowering of the water table, dry river and stream beds during dry parts of the year (insufficient supply from groundwater), and an increase in water pollution in local waterways
  • Water that runs off carries pollutants directly into streams whereas water that percolates into the ground will allow filtration and the activity of soil organisms to contain and even degrade the pollutants

Alternatives to Sprawl

Urban planning is the most effective means of reducing sprawl and it involves

• Planning transportation to service the city center
  • Avoiding "ring roads" that encourage more sprawl outside of the ring (some cities have multiple rings that have lead to increased problems with sprawl)
• Public transport investment to reduce energy consumption and pollution production
• Multifamily housing
• Multiple-use development (combined office, commercial, and residential space in multistory buildings)
  • Riverside land can be used for recreation, flood buffer zones, water filtration areas, storm water reservoirs, and wildlife habitat all at once
• Sequential use development - reusing land no longer in use (Brownfield Development)
  • Old factory sites can be recovered for other uses
• Natural Siting Criteria (use of land based on considerations other than property values) may also produce an increase in the quality of life for city residents and a simultaneous reduction in environmental impact of development
  • Siting of new development based on considerations of geology, hydrology, and wildlife potential

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Last updated October 26, 2012