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In this study, we combined policy analysis with landscape change modeling to simulate outcomes of alternative forest conservation instruments proposed by opposing policy coalitions. In 1992, concern over rapid land conversion to timber plantations ( Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus spp.) in Chile gave rise to a protracted policy process resulting in the 2008 Native Forest Law (NFL), which subsidizes reforestation and management with native forest. To date, however, NFL has had little impact on native forest conservation. To understand how the policy process that created the NFL shaped its outcomes, we employed the Dyna-CLUE modeling approach to simulate land use changes in south-central Chile from 1993 to 2007, based on 3 scenarios: (1) enactment of NFL in 1993 when the law was originally debated, and the different configurations of subsidies and regulations proposed in the NFL policy debate by (2) the industrial forestry coalition and (3) the forest conservation coalition. We observed no major difference in native forest loss between simulated outcomes of the industry-advocated policy and the actual NFL legislation. The conservation coalition’s policy scenario increased native forest area, primarily in shrub steppe areas, but also via conversion of pine plantations if incentive payments were large enough. However, NFL payments are inadequate to make native forest management a viable economic land use alternative to industrial pine plantations, which are also subsidized in Chile. Gains in native forest cover occurred mostly on lands under ancestral indigenous claims (unrelated to the discussion of the NFL). We conclude that the NFL, even if enacted in 1993, would have been ineffective in preventing native forest loss, because tree plantations are more profitable and NFL regulations were weakened by the industrial coalition that opposed—and strongly shaped—the final legislation. Effective incentives for protecting early-successional forests and shrublands are needed to mitigate further losses and foster recovery of Chile’s native forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale government efforts to develop resources for societal benefit have often experienced cycles of growth and decline that leave behind difficult social and ecological legacies. To understand the origins and outcomes of these failures of resource governance, scholars have applied the framework of the adaptive cycle. In this study, we used the adaptive cycle as a diagnostic approach to trace the drivers and dynamics of forest governance surrounding a boom-bust sequence of industrial forest management in one of the largest-scale resource systems in U.S. history: the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. Our application of the adaptive cycle combined a historical narrative tracing dynamics in political, institutional, and economic subsystems and a longitudinal analysis of an indicator of overall system behavior (timber harvests). We found that federal policies in concert with global market changes drove transformative change in both forest governance (policy making) and forest management (practices), through creation and dissolution of subsidized long-term lease contracts. Evidence of the systemic resilience provided by these leases was found in the analysis of industry responses to market volatility before and after Tongass-specific federal reforms. Although the lease contracts stabilized the Tongass system for a period of time, they fostered a growing degree of rigidity that contributed to a severe industrial collapse and the subsequent emergence of complex social traps. Broader lessons from the Tongass suggest that large-scale changes occurred only when the nested economic and policy cycles were in coherence, and a systemic effort to minimize social and ecological variability ultimately resulted in catastrophic collapse of governance. This collapse resulted in a pervasive and challenging legacy that prevents Tongass reorganization and limits the adaptive capacity of the larger social-ecological system of southeastern Alaska. Although this legacy has inhibited system renewal for two decades, recent trends indicate the emergence of new opportunities for progress toward sustainable governance of the Tongass National Forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managed ecosystems experience vulnerabilities when ecological resilience declines and key flows of ecosystem services become depleted or lost. Drivers of vulnerability often include local management actions in conjunction with other external, larger-scale factors. To translate these concepts to management applications, we developed a conceptual model of feedbacks linking the provision of ecosystem services, their use by society, and anthropogenic change. From this model we derived a method to integrate existing geodata at relevant scales and in locally meaningful ways to provide decision-support for adaptive management efforts. To demonstrate our approach, we conducted a case study assessment of southeast Alaska, where managers are concerned with sustaining fish and wildlife resources in areas where intensive logging disturbance has occurred. Individual datasets were measured as indicators of one of three criteria: ecological capacity to support fish/wildlife populations ( provision); human acquisition of fish/wildlife resources ( use); and intensity of logging and related land-use change ( disturbance). Relationships among these processes were analyzed using two methods—a watershed approach and a high-resolution raster—to identify where provision, use and disturbance were spatially coupled across the landscape. Our results identified very small focal areas of social-ecological coupling that, based on post-logging dynamics and other converging drivers of change, may indicate vulnerability resulting from depletion of ecosystem services. We envision our approach can be used to narrow down where adaptive management might be most beneficial, allowing practitioners with limited funds to prioritize efforts needed to address uncertainty and mitigate vulnerability in managed ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]