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Silva
Forest Foundation Documents Library
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Documents
require Acrobat Reader to
view and print:
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| Creston
Community Forest Initial Ecosystem-based Plan, May 2003
68 pages, 6 colour photographs, 6 colour maps, 13 colour figures,
13 tables
Report maps (11" x 17"):
Map
1 Map
2 Map
3 Map
4
Map 5 Map
6
For
best results when obtaining the maps, right-click on the text,
choose "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As...",
save the file with a .jpg extension to your computer and print
it from there on 11" x 17" paper.
Full format (45" x 36") maps are not available here,
contact SFF if you would like to obtain them.
Fraser
Headwaters Proposed Conservation Plan, 2001
133 pages, 30 colour photographs, 7 colour maps, 21 colour figures,
14 tables
Report maps (11" x 17"):
Map 1
Map 2 Map
3a Map 3b
Map 4
Map 5 Map 6
For
best results when obtaining the maps, right-click on the text,
choose "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As...",
save the file with a .jpg extension to your computer and print
it from there on 11" x 17" paper.
Full format (45" x 36") maps are not available here,
contact SFF if you would like to obtain them.
Ecosystem
Based Landscape Plan for the Horsey Creek Watershed, 1999
124
pages, 15 colour photographs, 8 b&w photographs, 7 colour
maps, 10 colour figures, 8 tables
Ecosystem
Based Forest Use Plan for the Harrop Procter Watersheds, 1998
82 pages, 9 colour photographs, 8 colour figures, 9 tables
Initial
Report on Methodology and Results of Cortes Island Ecosystem Based
Plan, 1996
63
pages, 9 colour maps, 1 b&w figure, 18 tables
An Ecosystem Based Landscape Plan for
the Slocan Valley, 1995
Table of Contents
Section 1 Section
2 Section 3
Section 4-1 Section
4-2 Section 5
Section 6 Section
7 Section 8
219
pages, 8 colour photographs, 22 colour figures, 28 tables
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SFF
Forest Use Philosophy |
Definitions:
Fully Functioning Forest Ecosystems, 1995
To maintain healthy, sustainable human societies
and economies, we must maintain fully functioning ecosystems. Although
this truism is obvious to many, the process of achieving it is not.
Silva has developed a practical, ecosystem-based forest use planning
process based on this principle: Maintaining a fully functioning
forest ecosystem requires maintaining the full natural range of
ecological functions at both the stand and landscape levels. This
paper provides practical definitions, derived from the concepts
of landscape ecology, of "fully functioning forest ecosystem"
and other associated concepts. These definitions are of value to
people developing and applying processes for forest use planning.
The
Boreal Forest: Options For Ecologically Responsible Human Use, 1994
The boreal forest is Earth's largest terrestrial
ecosystem and extends unbroken (except for oceans) around the northern
pole of the earth. Linking the more temperate southern grasslands
and forests to the cold, frozen tundra of the north, the boreal
forest has adapted to some of the most difficult climatic conditions
on Earth. Non-sustainable
timber cutting rates have liquidated much of the more southerly
temperate forests of Canada, the United States, and Russia. Thus
there is a growing interest in exploiting the boreal forest for
timber or wood fiber. These developments are putting short-term
political and economic interests ahead of the biology of boreal
forests and the cultures of Indigenous people who have inhabited
the boreal forest for thousands of years. A clear contradiction
emerges in society's use of the boreal forest: we understand very
little about the functioning of the boreal forest and, what we do
understand indicates that the boreal forest is an extremely sensitive
system that can be easily damaged. Due to the severe climate and
slow biological processes in the boreal forest, the effects of this
damage may extend for many centuries. However, within this framework
of uncertainty, governments and industry are making extensive plans
to modify the boreal forest using the same approaches to timber
management that have been applied, often unsuccessfully, in much
more forgiving forest environments around the world. Using the context
of this obvious contradiction, the purpose of this document is to
provide summary information about what is known regarding boreal
forest functioning and to contrast that with what is actually taking
place or is planned for timber management in the boreal forest.
Spiritual
Values and Land Management, 1994
This paper advances the view that land managers have
a great deal to learn about the limits of human knowledge and experience.
It emphasizes the importance of hands on experience, and native
value systems which call for a more wholistic view of "land
care". But, how can land management professionals learn to
care for spiritual values? Environmental Impact Assessments are
an insufficient solution. The
paper outlines twelve steps for land mangers and all individuals
to follow to practice genuine ecosystem-based management. The focus
is on respecting traditional values, and on learning from the ecosystem
itself how human use can be distributed and accommodated.
Wholistic
Forest Use, 1993
This 1993 revision of Herb Hammond's groundbreaking
1989 paper on wholistic forest use sets the stage for most of the
SFF's work and publications. Herb summarized the ideas he and the
SFF staff had been working toward in a succinct style which ties
together his personal philosophy, wholism, landscape ecology, forest
use zoning and basic standards for forest use. This is the the standard
SFF introductory paper. |
Ecosystem-based
Planning Methodology |
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Ecosystem-based
Planning: Principles and Process, 2002
This
brief paper outlines the goals, principles, and a process for
preparing ecosystem-based conservation plans. Ecosystem-based
plans are necessary in order to protect and maintain ecological
health and biological diversity at all scales, from small land
and water ecosystems to large landscapes. Human cultures and economies
depend on healthy ecosystems and biological diversity, in other
words, on natural capital. Planning human activities that protect,
maintain, and, where necessary, restore ecosystem health and biodiversity
is the basis for developing sustainable human economies and cultures.
Such activities are ecologically responsible, because they ensure
that ecological processes continue to support the full range of
life.
Ecosystem-based
planning is a system that may be effectively applied in unmodified
to highly modified landscapes; and may be used for a wide range
of purposes from conservation area design to resource development,
settlement design, and urban planning.
An
Ecosystem-based Approach to Forest Use: Definition and Scientific
Rationale, 1997
This paper provides a description of an ecosystem-based
approach to planning and carrying out human activities. Understanding
the relationships between ecosystems, human cultures, and economies
is at the heart of an ecosystem-based approach. Both common sense
and scientific knowledge lead us to the understanding that economies
are subsets of human cultures, and human cultures are subsets
of ecosystems. Therefore, if our activities protect the functioning
of ecosystems, we will protect human cultures, and if we protect
human cultures, we will protect or sustain our economies.
Ecosystem-based
planning and management can be defined as a way of relating to
and using the ecosystems we are part of in ways that ensure the
protection, maintenance, and, where necessary, restoration of
biological diversity, from the genetic and species levels to the
community and landscape levels. An ecosystem-based perspective
works at all scales from the microscopic to the global.
Wholistic
Cost Benefit Analysis, revised 1996
Conventional cost/benefit analysis as applied by
government and industry tends to value short term monetary returns
on investment at the expense of ecological and community integrity.
We believe that the goal of sustainable resource development is
to maintain an even flow of benefits and costs over the long term.
However, this will never be achieved by allowing today's benefits
to outweigh tomorrow's costs. Our method of cost/benefit analysis
balances the priorities in time and space. Short and long-term
local costs (ecosystem degradation and community instability)
are as important as short-term distant benefits (corporate profits
and returns to non-resident shareholders). This paper outlines
the methods we utilize in cost benefit analyses in our diverse
projects.
Landscape
Analysis: Step by Step Methodology, 1993
The methodology described in this document is a
step by step guide to the methods used by the SFF to carry out
landscape analysis and forest use planning, using maps and air
photos. The
landscape analyses which the SFF commonly performs have two broad
aims:To reach an understanding of basic landscape patterns and
landscape ecological processes in a forest area, and then propose
a protected network of landscape units which will protect and
maintain these patterns and processes after human disturbance
and resource use.
To allocate or zone forests by best use. Forest use categories
frequently include culture zones, ecologically sensitive protected
zones, wildlife protection zones, wilderness zones, recreation
and tourism use zones, and timber management zones.
The analysis methods described can help to create forest use plans
which will protect the landscape ecology, or the connections and
interactions in the forest landscape, during and after human use
of forests. The planning processes outlined in this paper, coupled
with ecologically responsible stand level practices, are positive
steps towards achieving this goal.
Landscape
Analysis and Planning: Overview, 1992
Landscape analysis is the process of describing
and interpreting the landscape ecology of an area. Resource patches
and a landscape network of connecting corridors are identified,
described and classified. The patterns which are detected can
then be used to assess the impacts of past disturbance (natural
or human), and to plan and regulate further human resource use.
Landscape planning identifies and protects the landscape components
necessary to maintain the stand ecology and the landscape ecology
of forest areas during and after human use. "Human"
is an important variable in this statement - the ecology of the
world would be in excellent shape without human intervention.
Still, man is a part of the total planetary ecosystem; landscape
planning and landscape ecology provide our current best hope of
living within the ecological limits imposed by the planetary ecosystem.
Silva advocates the use of landscape planning through systems
which are variously called wholistic forest use or ecologically
responsible forest use. These terms describe a system of landscape
level planning which respects both the ecological limitations
to human use and the established cultural uses of forests. The
goal is to achieve balanced use and stewardship of the forest
- to ensure that an intact, functioning, diverse forest landscape
remains after human use of forest resources.
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Brief
Literature Review of the Douglas-fir Bark Beetle, 2001
Assesing
the Ecological Impacts of Timber Management: Apparent Impacts,
Actual Impacts, and Precautionary Forest Development; A Literature
Review by the Silva Forest Foundation, May 1999
Efforts to understand and plan for the actual impact
that past and proposed forest development activities have on landscapes,
forest ecosystems, habitat quality, wildlife population dynamics,
and hence biodiversity, must take edge effects into account. A
basic first step is to assess the spatial extent of possible edge
effects during forest development planning, and describe that
extent on operational planning maps. Only then can decision makers,
affected First Nations, and the public fully appreciate the implications
of alternative forest management scenarios in terms of their impacts
on landscape ecology and biodiversity.
Riparian
Ecosystem Management Literature Review, 1998
Humans
and Fire in Dry Forests, 1998
This brief report addresses fire history and fire
management issues in dry site forests in western North America.
Such forests are found throughout central British Columbia, and
the western States, in the rain shadow east of the coastal mountain
ranges. Fire once played a major role in the dry climate forest
ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest. Ecologists now understand
that frequent light ground fires maintained a sparse understory
vegetation layer of fire adapted species and an open lower forest
canopy. Ecologists have concluded that fire suppression has caused
undesirable ecological modifications to dry climate Douglas-fir
forests. The formerly open old growth Douglas-fir forests are
now choked with dense Douglas-fir regeneration. We believe that
this condition is unnatural, poses a high fire hazard, reduces
wildlife habitat values, and may be contributing to forest stress
and forest decline by placing too great a demand on limited water
resources. The dense understory may be an important contributing
factor in the increase in Douglas-fir bark beetle populations.
Riparian
Zone Protection for Small Streams: A Brief Review of the Literature,
1997
Landscape
Corridors, 1995
Evan McKenzie (R.P.Bio) assembled this literature
review on connecting corridors during a land use planning process
in our area. The SFF advocates the use of corridors in landscape
planning (see documents below), but corridors are far from a perfect
solution to the landscape level problems caused by human resource
exploitation. This paper summarizes the arguments in support of
corridors, but also highlights the problems and nagative impacts
which corridors may cause. The conclusion, such as it is: Corridors
are needed in managed landscapes, but they are not a cure all
or an "ecological justification" for unrestrained landscape
modification in the area between corridors. We need both corridors
and an intact, functioning ecosystem.
Mountain
Pine Beetle, 1989 (updated 1993)
In order to understand the potential for the control
of the mountain pine beetle through environmental management,
it is necessary to understand the life habits and environmental
requirements of the beetle and its host. This document is a literature
review (with bibliography) presenting detailed information about
the ecology and interrelationship of the beetle and lodgepole
pine. Topics discussed include beetle life cycle and ecology,
population phases, and both theoretical and practical aspects
of management and control options that exploit weak links in the
beetle's population dynamics.
Landscape
Ecology Overview, 1992
Current timber management philosophies and techniques
operate primarily at the forest stand level, rather than at the
landscape level. As a result, given current logging methods, forest
landscapes are often fragmented, critical landscape connections
are broken, habitats are lost, and non-timber forest values such
as wilderness, water, and balanced allocation of human uses are
put at risk. Ecosystem-based forest use requires that forest use
planners consider both the stand level ecology and the landscape
ecology of a forest.
Stand level ecology is familiar to most foresters and forest users
as the combination of ecological factors that determines the biological
community occupying any specific forest site, and the biological
productivity of that site. However, forest stand ecosystems do
not function in isolation. Every forest stand is connected to
other forest stands by the movement or flow of water, energy,
nutrients, plants, and animals across the landscape.
Landscape ecology recognizes that the landscape is the framework
within which stand level ecosystems function. This document is
a literature review (with bibliography) of the major concepts
of landscape ecology, including: history and origin, basic definitions,
time and space, heterogeneity, connectivity. A discussion of the
application of landscape ecology to forest management is also
presented.
Old
Growth Ecology, 1991
The term "old growth forest" refers to
two separate but related concepts: 1) a phase in the life cycle
of all forests, and 2) a critical part of the functioning forest
landscape.
We know old growth forests are important, but we do not fully
understand their functions, the life forms they support, or their
importance to landscape ecology. The genetic information that
ancient forests contain has never been assessed. Both common sense
and present knowledge indicate the danger of eradicating old growth
from the forest landscape, or even reducing the proportion of
old growth forests beyond a certain, unknown point.
This document is a literature review of old growth forest ecology,
that discusses: composition, structure, and function in old growth
ecosystems; the effects of fire and other natural disturbances
in various forest types; the roles and habitats of vertebrate
and invertebrate species in old growth forests; the significance
of mycorhizal fungi and the unseen components of old growth forests.
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The
Power of Community - Ecosystem-based Conservation Planning Across
Canada
In summer 2003, the Silva Forest Foundation convened
a Community Summit of representatives from the twelve communities
where we have completed ecosystem-based plans. Summit participants
shared their stories and learned from each other. You can read
their powerful and inspiring stories in our booklet The Power
of Community. To order a print copy send and email to silvafor@netidea.com.
Cost for a print copy is $5 to cover postage and handling.
Introduction to
Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is a way of working with groups
to define a future grounded in the best of what has happened in
the past. It is a powerful tool that focuses on the positive and
creates tremendous energy within a group.
Russian Translations
Available
Many
of Silva's documents have been translated into Russian by staff
of Pacific Environment. You can link to Russian translations here.
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Seeing
the Forest Among the Trees: The Case for Wholistic Forest Use,
1992
Summary (Photo Essay)
Purchase the Book
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