Managing for Heterogeneity and Complexity on Dynamic Landscapes

Summary

If spatial and temporal heterogeneity and complexity are critical elements in the function of ecosystems, then it is important that the processes that maintain such heterogeneity and complexity be maintained, even managed. Such processes are often highly variable and unpredictable in their frequency, intensity, and spatial behavior. This variability presents challenges in setting management objectives, developing and executing management protocols and techniques, and evaluating their success.

I have three general messages to convey in this chapter. First, heterogeneity, complexity, and diversity are critical elements to sustained ecosystem function. Natural and, for that matter, human disturbances and the successional processes that derive from them are a critical component of that heterogeneity and complexity. Second, we have created a world in which human influences on and the manipulation and management of natural disturbance and ecological change are ubiquitous and inevitable. Finally, management requires explicit operational goals (Rogers, this volume), the means to know whether management interventions (or lack thereof) are achieving those goals, and the institutional structures that can and will adjust and adapt management techniques and protocols if they are not, or move the goalposts if new data or information suggest that we should.

To set a framework for discussion I first review a few basic elements of ecosystem management. Second, I consider, as a case study, the challenges posed by the management of natural disturbance in wilderness or wildlands. Finally, I consider how, or if, we can know we are managing it right.