Managing and Designing Landscapes for Conservation || Core Principles for Using Natural Disturbance Regimes to Inform Landscape Management

✍ Scribed by Lindenmayer, David B.; Hobbs, Richard J.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 118 KB
• Edition: 1
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 1405159146
• DOI: 10.1002/9780470692400.ch35

✦ Synopsis

The natural dynamics of a landscape, particularly its disturbance regimes, can inform managers how to design anthropogenic disturbances (e.g. logging and controlled burning) that are more ecologically sensitive than conventional management. Although perfect emulation of a natural disturbance is impossible, the effects of an anthropogenic disturbance may be ameliorated to some degree if it resembles the natural disturbances to which species have evolved various adaptations. For example, the spatial patterns that characterize a natural disturbance (e.g. size, shape and juxtaposition of disturbed patches) or the temporal patterns (e.g. return interval between disturbances, or seasonality of events) can be emulated to some degree. Similarly, the patterns of legacy materials left after a disturbance (e.g. abundance and distribution of logs and snags) also merit emulation. Although landscape management based on natural patterns has intuitive appeal, it should not become a ball and chain to constrain management; it should simply be a dominant technique in a diverse repertoire, and a catalyst for creative, ecologically sensitive thinking.

Core Principles for Using Natural Disturbance Regimes .