Beyond naturalness: Adapting wilderness stewardship to an era of rapid global change

Abstract

Climate change and its effects are writ large across wilderness landscapes. They always have been and always will be (see Figure 1). But contemporary change is different. For the first time, the pace and direction of climate change appear to be driven significantly by human activities (IPCC 2007), and this change is playing out across landscapes already affected by other anthropogenic stressors - pollution, invasive species, altered disturbance regimes, and land fragmentation (Cole, Millar, and Stephenson 2010). This raises serious questions about how wilderness stewards should respond to climate change and other anthropogenic stressors.

Citation

Cole, David N. 2012. Beyond naturalness: Adapting wilderness stewardship to an era of rapid global change. International Journal of Wilderness. 18(2): 9-14.