Subject: New Perspectives defined
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Comments:
Some time ago, a call went out to define New Perspectives and relate
it to New Forestry. We reviewed New Forestry a couple of
installments ago. Now we take a look at New Perspectives: In January
Wini Kessler, from the WO New Perspectives staff, outlined out an
"agenda" to define the role of research in our quest to implement a
new vision for national forest management. Titled "Research in a New
Role", Wini suggests that we need to (1) move toward ecosystem
management viewed from a "landscape" perspective, (2) view ecosystems
as wholes instead of individual parts--that a "production-oriented"
model blinded us for many years to the realities of "Caring for
the Land and Serving People", and (3) bring people into our management
decisions (rather that just let them comment on pre-formed decisions.
All this, and more in the 4 pages that follow. Dve.
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ECO-WATCH
3/22/91
RESEARCH IN A NEW ROLE
Winifred B. Kessler
New Perspectives is a response to people's changing values for the
national forests and grasslands, and a growing awareness of relationships
between ecosystem integrity, resource production, and quality of life. What
does New Perspectives mean for research and development programs of the Forest
Service? Or from a broader perspective, what will be the expanded role of
research given current trends in natural resources management in the U.S. today?
The research goal for New Perspectives is to enhance the scientific basis
for managing the national forests and grasslands in an ecologically sound and
socially acceptable manner. Vital to this goal is the capture of new knowledge
through the management experience, and use of this knowledge to better serve
society's needs.
How will the Forest Service accomplish its research goal for New
Perspectives? A key step will be integration of the information and technology
needs of New Perspectives into a national research agenda to implement the
agency's new strategic plan, "Strategy for the 90's for USDA Forest Service
Research" (USDA Forest Service, Washington DC). The plan's major components --
understanding ecosystems, understanding people and natural resource
relationships, and understanding and expanding resource options -- broadly
define the information and technology needs of New Perspectives.
The research agenda must be more than just additional studies to
strengthen existing programs of research. It must also reflect significant
changes in how scientists approach the research task. Such changes are not
confined to the "new perspective" embraced by the Forest Service. Rather, they
reflect the broader trends in people's feelings about environment and natural
resources as well as shifts in scientific thinking about the nature and study
of ecosystems. These trends and associated research needs are well documented
in the 1990 National Research Council report entitled "Forestry Research: A
Mandate For Change" (National Academy Press, Washington DC). A major conclusion
is that the traditional model for forestry research, rooted in agricultural
production, is inadequate to meet society's needs today. The report calls for
a new environmental paradigm that recognizes the complexity of forest ecosystems
and the full array of needs and values they provide to society.
The following sections suggest key changes in natural resources research
to support successful implementation of New Perspectives.
Understanding People
Public interest in the management of the national forests and grasslands
is not new. However, recent changes in the scope and character of that interest
leave managers unprepared to address many of the values and concerns at issue
today.
During the past four decades, a production-oriented model has been
applied in the various aspects of national forest management, including public
involvement. People are asked to respond to planning documents that project
quantities of the various multiple uses to be provided under various management
alternatives (for example board-feet of timber, recreation user-days, or pounds
of fish). Resource trade-offs are presented as changes in quantity of one use
relative to changes in quantities of another under different management
alternatives.
How well does this approach respond to people's values and expectations
for their national forests and grasslands today? Not very well, judging from
the very different set of questions that many people ask of land use planners
and resource managers: Will the proposed management leave the forest or
grassland healthy and beautiful to look at? Will biological diversity be
maintained? What will be the cumulative effects on downstream water quality?
Will the proposed management sustain the ability of ecosystems to perform vital
ecological services such as oxygen recharge, water conservation, and nutrient
cycling that contribute to the planet's life-support systems? Will long-term
productivity be maintained so that our grandchildren will have the same
opportunities and management options that we enjoy today?
These questions reveal a set of values that exceeds the traditional
"multiple uses" as defined in national forest research and management, and
reflect quality-of-life concerns for this and future generations. People are
interested not only in the products and services extracted from the land, but
also in the condition of the lands and ecosystems providing these uses. And
"condition" may include value-laden qualities such as visual beauty, wildness,
and spiritual values not effectively addressed by traditional descriptors
relating to forest structure, health, and productivity.
The old perspective viewed management of the national forests and
grasslands as a problem in the physical and biological sciences, with the human
aspects considered primarily through the discipline of economics. The new
perspective finds much broader meaning in Forest Service mission of "caring for
the land and serving people." Effectively serving people requires understanding
of how people perceive, value, and relate to their lands and resources. This
calls for a more prominent role for the social sciences in all aspects of
national forest research and management.
Looking at Wholes as well as Parts
New Perspectives presents new research and management challenges that
must be addressed from a whole-system perspective. The new challenge is to
sustain the integrity of landscapes and ecosystems with their diverse values,
rather than simply sustaining a flow of use outputs. Key questions of how
ecosystems respond to management regimes, and how well the responses meet
society's objectives, are inadequately addressed by current reductionist
approaches to research.
Because whole ecosystems are far too complex to address by conventional
methods of scientific inquiry, natural resources research has tended to focus
on selected ecosystem parts and processes. By reducing complexity, this
approach allows scientists to meet requirements for replication, control
variation, and test hypotheses about the structure and function of ecosystem
components and relationships to management practices. This approach has been
compatible with a management model that strives to simplify ecosystems and to
focus production on a few defined uses.
We now know, however, that knowledge of the individual parts and
processes does not add up to understanding of the whole. Ecosystems have
properties of their own that may not be seen or understood when the parts are
observed out of the context of the whole. Properties we observe for individual
parts in isolation may not hold when viewed from the perspective of the whole.
The reductionist approach comes up short when the management model changes from
one focused on use outputs to one that includes objectives for landscape
integrity and ecosystem sustainability.
What changes are required to complement the reductionist approach with
a whole-system perspective for ecosystem research? First, scientists must be
willing to embrace the complexity of nature rather than regard it as a
complication of the scientific method. The complex questions raised are beyond
the scope of single disciplines and individual researchers. Therefore, a second
important change will be greater use of the interdisciplinary team approach to
the study of ecosystem structure, function, and relationships to management.
A third change involves appropriateness of scale for addressing land and
resource management questions under New Perspectives. No longer can we limit
our view to individual stands, sites, or actions in evaluating the effects of
management. Appropriate management can not be judged from site and stand
characteristics only, but also must consider how that unit fits into the context
of the landscape of which it is a part. Management requires understanding of
how the cumulative effects of management actions affect landscape pattern and
process; and, in turn, the consequences of these changes for ecosystem
sustainability.
Increasingly, scientists must take a landscape-level approach in the
study of ecosystems and natural resource interactions. The time has never been
better, as new developments in remote sensing and geographic information systems
provide unprecedented capability for landscape-level research.
Learning from the Management Experience
The preceding discussion may have readers questioning the feasibility of
"landscape-level experiments" required of the new research agenda. This
reaction is to be expected, given that Forest Service research and management
have tended to function as distinct entities. The typical setting for research
is the experimental plot, where specific questions can be addressed without the
confounding effects of management activities. The primary means for applying
research to management is through "technology transfer," a process for passing
research results along to managers. Technology transfer assumes that results
from experimental research are relevant to the complex reality of land and
resources management, and that managers are able to apply this information in
management decisions and programs.
A major goal of New Perspectives is to close the gap between research and
management through unprecedented collaboration of scientists, managers, and the
public. New Perspectives "happens" when researchers, managers, and affected
people work together to implement and evaluate forest plan direction on managed
landscapes within the national forests and grasslands. One role of research is
to ensure that existing knowledge is fully and effectively used in design and
conduct of New Perspectives management. Often, New Perspectives applications
will be experimental in the sense of not having been tried before in operational
settings. Therefore a second major research role is to provide a framework that
provides for scientific testing and evaluation of the concepts and methods
applied. How well management actions achieve the desired results, and how
closely ecosystem responses match with predicted outcomes, are key questions
requiring evaluation within this framework.
The integration of research and management in "landscape level
experiments" offers unprecedented capability to carry out adaptive management,
the timely evaluation of whether management responses are as predicted and
desired. Results are needed to determine thresholds for corrective adjustments
to management if magnitudes or directions of change are not acceptable. These
evaluations provide research direction for the further refinement of data and
analyses upon which the predictions were based.
In the final analysis, this ability to practice adaptive management of
the national forests and grasslands to better serve society may be the most
significant benefit of the integration of science, management, and public
involvement that is New Perspectives.
________________________________________________________
Wini Kessler is Asst. Director for Research and Development, New Perspectives
Staff, USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC
This article was submitted to Environmental Quarterly (Journal of the American
Planning Association) Jan. 1, 1991. Distributed as a working draft on ECO-WATCH
with permission from Author.