ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT WITH MULTIPLE OWNERS - LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS IN A SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN WATERSHED

Ecosystem management is emerging as an organizing theme for land use a nd resource management in the United States. However, while this subje ct is dominating professional and policy discourse, little research ha s examined how such system-level goals might be formulated and impleme nted. Effective ecosystem management will require insights into the fu nctioning of ecosystems at appropriate scales and their responses to h uman interventions, as well as factors such as resource markets and so cial preferences that hold important influence over land and resource use. In effect, such management requires an understanding of ecosystem processes that include human actors and social choices. We examine ec osystem management issues using spatial models that simulate landscape change for a study site in the southern Appalachian highlands of the United States. We attempt to frame a set of ecosystem management issue s by examining how this landscape could develop under a number of diff erent scenarios designed to reflect historical land-cover dynamics as well as hypothetical regulatory approaches to ecosystem management. Sc enarios based on historical change show that recent shifts in social f orces that drive land cover change on both public and private lands im ply a more stable and a more forested landscape. Scenarios based on tw o hypothetical regulatory instruments indicate that public land manage ment may have only limited influence on overall landscape pattern and that spatially targeted approaches on public and private lands may be more efficient than blanket regulation for achieving landscape-level g oals.