The Importance of Scale in Assessing the Compatibility of Forest Commodities and Biodiversity

Abstract

The idea that forest commodities and biological diversity can be simultaneously produced from the same area in a socially acceptable manner (Haynes et al. 2002) is common in natural resources management, but is infrequently tested in natural resources science. This concept is related to the principle of multiple use, which was encoded in the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 and endorsed in the National Forest Management Act of 1976. It is clear from the heated controversies and changes in forest management in recent decades that managers of the national forests have found it extremely difficult to achieve a socially acceptable mix of commodity production and biodiversity conditions. Although the idea of compatible uses is prevalent, systematic scientific approaches rarely have been used to test particular management approaches at any spatial scale (Haynes et al. 2002). Field experiments have only recently begun to evaluate consequences of alternative stand-level management activities on both commodities and measures of biological diversity (Monserud 2002). While information from silvicultural experiments is certainly needed, finding compatible mixes of different forest uses requires a multiscale perspective. Ecological, social, and economic patterns and processes occur at different scales within spatial, temporal, and phenomeno-logical hierarchies. What may appear compatible at one scale may not be at another.