Application of Adaptive Resource Management to Decision Making in Dynamic Landscapes: the Role of Spatial Scale

Co –investigators:

Michael J. Conroy, Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

Craig Allen, South Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

            Land management for wildlife conservation in the Southeast is complicated by several issues, all of which involve spatial scale in some form.   First, cohesive management of resource systems requires explicit consideration of  landscapes: population, community, and other processes typically overlap ownership and jurisdictional boundaries, and fall under at least 3 levels of administrative control, particularly in the East where these tend to be small and interspersed.   Second, land management decisions tend to occur at multiple spatial scales.  Resource objectives may conflict, as objectives become defined on a finer spatial scale, or with respect to more specific resource components.   Third, much uncertainty exists with respect to demographic and other biological processes.  Key parameter values (population size, demographic and movement rates) are unavailable or poorly estimated.  Functional relationships, including the spatial scale at which relevant population and community processes operate, are poorly understood.   As a result, predictions of the consequence of changes in landscape habitat conditions or other environmental factors are subject to great error. These issues of process uncertainty must be considered to the extent that these may lead to very different, but apparently optimal decisions.  We proposed to investigate the feasibility and implications of a landscape-level, objective- driven, adaptive approach to resource management for forest management for neotropical migratory birds in the southern Piedmont (SC, GA).  The management objective will be to sustain populations of neotropical migratory  and other birds of conservation concern (e.g., bobwhite quail), subject to constraints imposed by other landowner or resource objectives (e.g., timber management).  

Tasks

• Technical workshops aimed at identifying uncertainty in demographic and other biological processes, key parameter values (population size, demographic and movement rates), and key scales of interest. 

• Analysis of the feasibility of landscape level adaptive management in addressing the above problems and outline of the key institutional and informational components necessary to provide a working landscape ARM, if feasible

• Proposals to secure funding for conceptual and theoretical work on the above issues

• Submission of a synthetic, conceptual manuscript summarize the results of the collaborative efforts to Ecological Modeling, Landscape Ecology, or Conservation Ecology.

Products

Workshops Funded:

“Ecological Organization”, Workshop at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, June 2000.

“Landscape changes in the Southern Piedmont.” Workshop at Clemson University, November 2000.

“Landscape changes in the Southern Piedmont.” Workshop at Amicolola Falls State Park, Georgia, 19-20 April 2001

Web pages

Proposals submitted:

“Adaptive Modeling of Landscape Change and Vertebrate Population Response at Multiple Spatial Scales” submitted to the National Science Foundation (Biocomplexity). K. Boston, Michael J. Conroy, R. Daniels, J.  Peterson, University of Georgia; Craig R. Allen, Clemson University

“ Assessing Ecological, Agricultural, and Social Resilience in the Southern Piedmont” submitted to the USDA National Research Initiative (Managed Ecosystems).  Lowell Pritchard, Jr. and Lance Gunderson, Emory University; Craig R. Allen and Alan R. Johnson, Clemson University; Michael J. Conroy, J. Peterson, University of Georgia

Manuscripts submitted:

Landscape Change in the Southern Piedmont: Challenges, Solutions, and Uncertainty Across Scales.  Michael J. Conroy, James T. Peterson, Craig Allen, Richard F. Daniels, Clinton T. Moore, and Lowell Pritchard.  Submitted to Conservation Ecology.