Treesearch

Abstract-The Todas worship scores of hilltops where they believe their principal deities or clan-specific local gods reside. It is thus considered sacrilege even to point towards such a deity peak with one's finger. It is also no coincidence at all that the area in and around the Toda sacred-landscape, where their major hill deities are believed to reside, has come to constitute in recent times, the core of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. This is the very first biosphere reserve in all of India (1986). There is now an urgent need to have this region inscribed as a World Heritage site.

Santa Clara Indian Pueblo lands are adjacent to the Jemez National Forest, Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve. This paper explores Pueblo vulnerability and resilience after repeated and devastating fires in this century as a result of drought and climate change. Santa Clara Pueblo holds a rich store of traditional knowledge about the fire-prone ecosystems that contributes to restoration efforts after this series of high-severity fires in the Jemez Mountains. Forested lands and wilderness shrines are lost, Santa Clara Creek and watershed suffers from erosion...

When Australian Governments committed to building a National Reserve System (NRS) for Australia in 1991 they didn't anticipate that some of the most important conservation gains were to be made on Indigenous owned land. An innovative Federal Government policy decision in 1996 to support Indigenous landowners to establish Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA# on their land provided a breakthrough in national conservation efforts. This policy and ensuing program was established ensuring that Indigenous communities held full control of decision making, including participation, how much of their...

Recent academic literature has expressed concern over the potential impact of the increasing types and levels of electronic (largely communication-related) technology brought by visitors into the wilderness. A key issue has been perceived changes in risktaking behavior by wilderness and backcountry users. Despite these concerns, extremely limited empirical assessment of the potential impact of technology such as cell phones, global positioning systems and personal locator beacons on wilderness users and the wilderness experience has been undertaken. Do users share the same unease about the...

This paper addresses the question of whether spiritual, religious or cultural values held by humans for some wild mountain areas can protect these special places from developments that impair both these values and wild nature. The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes a minimization of damage. Examples of each of these scenarios are briefly given, along with a more detailed current battle between the sacred and the profane in the case of the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, USA. Some recommendations are given that help to strengthen the case when intangible values of reverence...

The main goal of national forest programs is to lead and steer forest policy development and implementation processes in an inter-sectoral way (FAO 2006). National forest monitoring systems contribute to forest programs through monitoring forest changes and forest services over time (FAO 2013). To do so, they generally collect and analyze forest-related data and provide knowledge and recommendations at regular intervals. The collection of forest-related data and their analyses have continually evolved with technological and computational advances (Kleinn 2002).

As pressures on forest resources mount, there is an increasing need for up-to-date information on which sound management and policy decisions can be made. This is evident in the adoption of shorter inventory cycle lengths for national forest inventories in the past few decades. While these intensified efforts are meritorious, substantial efficiency can be lost if cycle lengths are too short in relation to growth in the population. Specifically, if growth is small in relation to measurement variation, the signal-to-noise ratio is small and considerable expense is incurred to obtain data of...

The use of conservation easements to keep private lands undeveloped and protect open space and large scale landscapes has grown rapidly. The New York State Adirondack Park includes 2.5 million acres (1 million ha) of state owned land and 3 million acres (1.2 million ha) of private lands; over 781,000 acres (316,194 ha) of these private lands were under publicly held conservation easement by 2012. Private landowners include commercial forest and agricultural owners, second homeowners, residential landowners, conservation organizations, educational institutions, and others. The conservation...

The State of Maine in the US is 94% privately owned, and is the most forested state in the country. Fifteen years ago, Maine ranked last among US eastern states in its percentage of land under conservation; today it ranks near the top. The Nature Conservancy and its many partners have achieved this extraordinary turn-around through a combination of bold acquisitions and strategic innovations. This paper will explain The Nature Conservancy's pioneering strategies for the protection and restoration of large, privately owned forested landscapes; strategies that are applicable in many other...

The proliferation of digital cameras co-located with eddy covariance instrumentation provides new opportunities to better understand the relationship between canopy phenology and the seasonality of canopy photosynthesis. In this paper we analyze the abilities and limitations of canopy color metrics measured by digital repeat photography to track seasonal canopy development and photosynthesis, determine phenological transition dates, and estimate intra-annual and interannual variability in canopy photosynthesis. We used 59 site-years of camera imagery and net ecosystem exchange measurements...