Treesearch

Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) was originally formulated to deal with the issue of recreation carrying capacity in wilderness. Enthusiasm for the process has led to questions about its applicability to a broad range of natural resource issues—both within and outside of protected areas. This paper uses a generic version of the LAC process to identify situations where LAC can usefully be applied and situations where it cannot. LAC’s primary usefulness is in situations where management goals are in conflict, where it is possible to compromise all goals somewhat, and where planners are...

In 1985 the Forest Supervisors and staff of the Bitterroot, Clearwater, and Nez Perce National Forests met and agreed to an action plan for implementing a Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) planning process for the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (SBW). The process, which was to include a citizens task force, was to produce a completed management plan in 2 years. Eight years later, in May 1992, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness General Management Direction was officially amended to the Forests’ forest plans and the implementation phase began. This paper documents the application of the LAC...

An introductory review of how and why the workshop was held.

Public agencies are being asked to quantitatively assess the impact of land management activities on sensitive populations of salmonids. To aid in these assessments, we developed a Bayesian viability assessment procedure (BayVAM) to help characterize land use risks to salmonids in the Pacific Northwest. This procedure incorporates a hybrid approach to viability analysis that blends qualitative, professional judgment with a quantitative model to provide a generalized assessment of risk and uncertainty. The BayVAM procedure relies on three main components: (1) an assessment survey in which...

Spatially-varied hydrologic surface conditions exist on steep hillslopes after timber harvest operation and site preparation burning treatments. Site preparation burning creates low- and high-severity burn surface conditions or disturbances. In this study, a hillslope was divided into multiple combinations of surface conditions to determine how their spatial arrangement would effect erosion. More erosion occurred when high-severity burn conditions occurred above low severity burn conditions. Various hillslope configurations conclude that the spatial distribution of fire severity conditions...

The Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP) framework was developed by the National Park Service to address carrying capacity questions associated with visitation-related resource impacts and impacts to the quality of visitor experiences. The framework can be applied as part of a park’s general management planning process (general management plans, GMPs), to address visitor use issues for parks with existing GMPs, or to address issues in specific areas within a park. This paper explores similarities and differences between VERP and other planning frameworks as well as assesses...

The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) process was developed to deal with the issue of recreational carrying capacity. For that purpose, the LAC process sought to explicitly define a compromise between resource/visitor experience protection and recreation use goals. The most critical and unique element of the process is the specification of LAC standards that define minimally acceptable conditions. This paper identifies the antecedents of LAC, describes the rationale behind its formulation, and attempts to clarify LAC terminology and concepts. It assesses the extent to which a more generic...

Angora goats have been suggested as biological control agents for leafy spurge, especially in environmentally sensitive or limited access areas. Dietary preferences and dietary nutritive content of herded Angora goats were evaluated over a two-year period in North Dakota. Relative preferences of forages were evaluated by comparing botanical composition of diets as determined by microhistological analysis of fecal samples to forage availability in the field. Leafy spurge and shrubs comprised the largest percentage of goat diets throughout each grazing season. Goats preferred leafy spurge...

A discrete-time reaction-diffusion model for black-footed ferret release, population growth, and dispersal is combined with ferret carrying capacity constraints based on prairie dog population management decisions to form a spatial optimization model. Spatial arrangement of active prairie dog colonies within a ferret reintroduction area is optimized over time for maximum expected adult ferret population. This modeling approach is applied in an exploratory case study to a black-footed ferret reintroduction program in Badlands National Park and Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota....