One of the outcomes of climate warming is that species will have to move to remain within climatic zones that match their physiological tolerances.  Some common examples include the northward migration of boreal forest species into areas that are currently tundra and the upward migration of mountain species.

As Scott Loarie and colleagues note¹ in this week’s Nature (subscription required), we often think of mountain ecosystems as being particularly threatened because alpine species have nowhere to go.

To analyze this challenge, they looked at the spatial gradients of temperature across land masses of the world.  These data indicate how temperature changes over a known distance (temperature gradient = degrees C per kilometer).

Then, they used climate model model projections to determine how fast the temperature of a region will change (warming rate = degrees C per year).

By dividing the warming rate by the temperature gradient, they determined what they called the temperature velocity (kilometers per year)—which is basically represents how fast you (or another species) needs to move along the earth’s surface to maintain a constant temperature (check this division for yourself to see how the units cancel).

What did they find?

Here is the rank order of temperature velocities for biome types (from lowest to highest, with average velocity—km/yr— in parentheses)

• tropical and subtropical coniferous forests (0.08)
• temperate coniferous forests (0.11)
• montane grasslands and shrublands (0.11)
• Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub (0.26)
• tundra (0.29)
• tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (0.33)
• temperate broadleaf and mixed forests (0.35)
• tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests (0.42)
• boreal forest (0.43)
• temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands (0.59)
• tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands (0.67)
• deserts and xeric shrublands (0.71)
• mangroves (0.95)
• flooded grasslands and savannas (1.26)

These data suggest that species in the latter categories will have to move much faster than those in former categories to keep up with climate change.

This make sense if you think about it because mountains have steep climate gradients where there is a lot of temperature change over little distance.  We can therefore say that these kinds of habitats have a bit of a buffer against climate warming—indeed, in most of these regions, species only have to be able to move 0.11 km/yr—about the length of a football field.  This runs counter to what most people have thought about mountain ecosystems being especially fragile to climate change.

However, when you look at globally conserved areas, the picture is less rosy.  The authors claim that only 8% of conservation areas have residence times greater than 100 years, meaning that existing climate will be gone in that time.  Put another way, in 92% of conservation areas, climate will be uncharacteristic of the region in less than a century.

This makes conservation extremely challenging—it means that the traditional notions of park boundaries no longer work because species will likely need to move by the end of the century.

There are a few important caveats that the authors point out.  One big one is that the fate of species depends on their breadth of physiological tolerance.  Species with the capacity to tolerate a wide range of climates will not need to move as rapidly (if at all) compared to those with narrow physiological tolerances.

This is an interesting way to show how fast the climate space will move over time, allowing biologists to work more on physiological tolerances to see what species or ecosystem types might be most vulnerable to warming and to develop adaptation plans for them.

¹Loarie, S. et al. (2009) The velocity of climate change. Nature 462: 1052-1057.

____

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/agrinberg/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Robert Smith and colleagues argue¹ that it’s time to reorganize the approach to conservation in developing nations.

They are critical of academics and NGOs for missing what they think really matters—effective, on-the-ground research and policy development with strong local participation and buy in.

Part of this stems from the focus of academics.  They cite as an example the work of Norman Myers and Conservation International, who published a now-famous map of biodiversity hotspots.

The map was marketed as a tool for identifying where conservation investment would have the biggest impact, but this involved playing down both how little was actually known about species distributions and that accurate global data sets on the costs of implementation were not available.

These limitations did not stop the map doing its main job, which was to raise funds and show broadly where Conservation International should target its efforts. In fact, the initiative has been extremely successful and helped to raise an estimated  US$750 million for conservation within hot spots. But the hype led many academics to treat priority area setting as simply a question of working out what lives where. This led to many studies that took no account of how plans are implemented.

And part of it stems from traditional structures of NGOs, which, in Smith’s words,

[facilitates] the need to create a sense of urgency among donors lead[ing] to short-term funding and ‘quick and dirty’ projects, which rarely gain local long-term support. Second, NGOs tend to advocate their institutional methodology, rather than allowing local agencies to develop approaches that best match their needs. Third, NGO researchers find it easier to produce articles on broad-scale issues for high-impact journals, which helps to build scientific support for new campaigns, than to write papers about research on local issues.

What’s the new approach they advocate?

Their recommended overhaul includes putting local agencies and citizens in charge of the conservation programs.  It’s an idea increasingly advocated by proponents of indigenous and community conserved areas.

Specifically, they recommend developing “social-learning institutions,” which unite local and international interests.  The role of NGOs and academics becomes a partnership or subordinate relationship to the local communities developing and implementing conservation plans.

What would these institutions do?  Smith sees several needs, emphasizing a strong role for social analysis:

• investigating what makes people support or block conservation projects
• the social and economic implications of different methods for prioritizing conservation areas
• the social, economic and biodiversity benefits of different management approaches
• the effectiveness of these conservation projects
• approaches for building support for conservation
• research on the geographical distribution of biodiversity and how this will change with climate change…but only if produced in a way that helps local decision-making.

They also see a new role for journals and global conservation organizations—cataloging and disseminating approaches used around the world, identifying ones that are successful (and the social-ecological context in which they are successful) as well as the ones that fail (with analysis of why they failed).  These would be immensely useful to local agencies working on the ground.

The conservation-science community should recognize those with the highest academic or media profile can no longer set the research agenda. Moreover, academics need to understand that if they work in isolation from local conservation agencies, those who might usefully apply their research will probably ignore it. If academics really want to change the conservation agenda or achieve results on the ground, they should join or set up social learning institutions as part of a planning process. This will take more time than simply firing off another paper, but it will also lead to more interesting, novel and important research.

¹Smith, R. et al. (2009) Let the locals lead. Nature 462: 280-281.

_____

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/eclectic-echoes/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In the latest issue of Ecology and Society (open access), Colin Beier and colleagues provide an interesting case study of the Tongass National Forest (Alaska), examining the social-ecological dynamics of resource systems and why they often fail–in the long term–to deliver either improvements in public welfare or ecological sustainability. It’s important to note that they’re talking about a paradigm typical of 19-20th Century USA (i.e., post-colonial people of European descent in North America).

What I like about this case study is its generality to several kinds of natural resources and the lessons it offers when considering development in the modern world.

You’ll see at the end that they describe a solution similar to the growing Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) movement promoted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  And you’ll see an example of the changing focus of The Nature Conservancy as they work to promote sustainable development alongside conservation.

An excerpt:

Government efforts to stimulate the development of natural resources for public benefit often seek to implement a vision at grand scales that, over time, creates a cycle of dependency that undermines the original social purpose as well as the resource base that was intended to be sustained. In the United States, this has occurred with respect to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, water, and many other types of resource systems.  Similar cycles of dependency have emerged through international aid programs to developing nations that were intended to create self-sufficiency through resource development. Although the goals of these programs are often socially admirable and provide an economic stimulus to initiate changes that would otherwise lack the resources to emerge —i.e., to escape from poverty traps —they often result in challenging social traps that can constrain options for future generations. Why have these governance efforts failed so consistently, and what lessons can be learned that would enlighten efforts to address new frontiers of resource governance and public welfare in a rapidly changing world?

What did they find?

First, a little history.  They broke down the story of the Tongass National Forest into four periods:

(1) Organization

• Federal managers developed broad visions of a self-sufficient economy based on timber.
• Primary forests were to be converted to secondary forests used for lumber and pulp.
• Timber demand by WWII war effort provided catalyst for large-scale clearcutting.
• An alliance was forged among Tongass managers, national policymakers, and the timber industry.  A common vision of industrial forestry was established. This was deemed to be the best path for economic development and ecological management of forests.  These stakeholders would become the “policy monopoly.”

(2) Growth

• Passage of the Tongass Timber Act (TTA, 1947) triggered full-scale infrastructure development.  Timber harvest rose to 20 times the level during the organization phase.
• The TTA solidified the policy monopoly of the above stakeholders.
• Land leases were heavily subsidized and distributed noncompetitively to the forest industry.
• The policy monopoly was eventually challenged by passage of environmental protection laws in the 1960s and 70s, including the Multiple Use Sustained Yield (MUSY) Act, which opened new avenues for rule making and policy debate.

(3) Conservation

• First ruling against clearcutting were passed in 1975 in the Tongass NF.
• National Forest Management Act affirmed MUSY policy, but left implementation objectives open to debate.  This had the effect of transferring the venue of debate to federal courts, where a strategy of legal obstructionism began paralyzing national forest management.
• Preservation of 1/3 of Tongass lands under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA, 1981) drew opposition from the traditional policy monopoly, which won a concession stipulating 4.5 billion board feet of timber harvests per decade (450 million per year)–irrespective of external market forces.
• Increased global competition started to cause declines in demand for Tongass timber.
• Despite these challenges, the policy monopoly was able to maintain control in the face of growing conservation demands and increased global competition because of the large concessions they gained through ANILCA.

(4) Collapse

• The non-competitive basis of lease allocation eventually drew criticism, and the passage of the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA, 1990) dismantled the policy monopoly.
• This resulted in (1) the 450 million board feet harvest per year concession being replaced by a policy to supply timber at a rate in accordance with market demand and (2) increased competition within the regional timber industry.
• In response, investors and the industry viewed the Tongass as no longer being profitable and predictable.  This occurred because of the loss of the concession mandating 4.5 billion board feet per decade, increased age and lower efficiency of Alaskan mills, a decline of timber exports in the world market, and high operating costs in southeast Alaska. Closure of paper and pulp mills became widespread.
• The Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP, 1997) brought about ecosystem management, species conservation, and wilderness preservation.

Some concluding excerpts from the authors:

Policy mobilized much of the initial growth, provided much of the stability during the conservation phase, and served to destabilize—at first incrementally and then rather suddenly—the industrial forestry regime of the Tongass. The changing economic context dictated the timing of policy implementation (growth phase) and eroded the resilience of the Tongass system during its collapse. We found that, in both the initiation and collapse of the Tongass system, transformative change occurred only when the adaptive cycles of two or more subsystems were in coherence—in other words, when some synergy existed in economic, political, and institutional components.

….As the glue that held the entire governance system together—i.e., coupling the institutional, economic, and policy subsytems of the Tongass into a rigid configuration—the dissolution of lease contracts had catastrophic consequences. Rigidity in the system, created initially to promote growth but increased over time as a mechanism to resist external changes, precluded any efforts to adapt or transform. Since collapse, Tongass governance has been largely incapable of reorganization.

….During the first severe price depression faced by the Tongass-based
industry, although the long-term leases and subsidies were considered safe, market volatility resulted in similar fluctuations in harvest output. When market prices recovered and stabilized, harvests rebounded to previous levels. In other words, when the policy subsystem was resilient, it afforded resilience to the economic subsystem by assuring investor confidence in the long-term leases and future profit potential. In contrast, when a second, but less severe, market downturn occurred in the early 1990s, the entire system collapsed, triggered by closure of the regional pulp mills and the subsequent termination of both lease contracts.

The Tongass adaptive cycle illustrates how “command-and-control” management–the attempt to control system variability, and the assumption that outcomes would be static and predictable—may emerge in the organizing principles of a resource system, be successful for a period of time, but eventually yield to catastrophic failure.

Overall, this approach created intrinsic vulnerabilities that were largely masked during the boom years of Tongass timber, but have left a multifaceted legacy that includes the current political stalemate, a less competitive regional industry, and concerns about capacity of managed forest watersheds to sustain local production of resources—including timber—essential for subsistence and commercial economies. Each of these outcomes points to the existence of “rigidity traps” preventing reorganization of the Tongass system to address new challenges and opportunities.

A more-sustainable future?

Recent developments suggest a potential pathway out of these rigidity traps and reorganization toward more sustainable governance of the Tongass. In 2000, with the cooperation of a regional environmental advocacy coalition, forest managers began a “microsale” program that offers very small quantities of very high-grade timber, relative to historical sales. These offers involve up to 50 000 board feet per sale, which may equate to as few as 10 individual trees; in contrast, standard clearcut harvest units typically range into several millions of board feet across hundreds of acres. With microsales, trees are harvested using selection logging and aerial yarding methods that have minimal ecological impact compared with the large clearcut harvests of the past five decades. Tongass microsales also meet local demand and provide opportunities for value-added manufacturing, and perhaps most importantly, all sales have involved competitive bidding and none have been challenged in court. Further advancements in cooperation and building trust among stakeholders are also evident. In 2006, the Tongass entered into its first-ever institutional partnership with an environmental organization—The Nature Conservancy of Alaska —to support community-based management of second-growth forests for improving wildlife habitat, future timber values, and several other ecosystem services. Both programs suggest an institutional change that may allow adaptation to new conditions. while allowing forest managers to continue to produce economic benefits for local communities, in part through timber production. At the same time, globalization and changes in national and global values have altered the economic context (e.g., through expanded ecotourism) and provided new ways in which the Tongass can provide valuable ecosystem services to society.

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/ / CC BY-SA 2.0