Volume 1/Chapter 1/Sierra Nevada Ecosystems

* Critical Finding

Introduction

Rock and Soil

* The SNEP Study Area

Climate

Water

Plants and Vegetation

* Ecosystems

* Insect Species Found Only in the Sierra

Animals

Humans In The Sierra

Social Institutions

* LAND OWNERSHIP AND RESERVE ALLOCATION IN THE SIERRA NEVADA

THE SIERRA NEVADA OF THE FUTURE

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* Land Ownership and Reserve Allocation in the Sierra Nevada

FIGURE 1.7 (ACTUAL VIEW 6K)

Sierra Nevada ownership, percentage of land within the core Sierra Nevada ecoregion, and percentage within the greater study area. (From volume II, chapter 23.)

The Sierra Nevada core area includes 20,663,930 acres. Of this, 36% is private. About two-thirds of the land area is publicly owned (figure 1.7). Most of that is national forest (U.S. Forest Service). Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the second largest category of public land. The National Park Service (NPS), the state of California, and local jurisdictions administer smaller pieces within the SNEP study area (table 1.1). Most of the high elevations throughout the Sierra are public (see back cover), as are large proportions of the eastern Sierra. Public lands extend to middle elevations on the west side, with large areas of intermixtures of private and public sections (³checkerboard²) in the northern half, which track areas of early railroad crossings of the Sierra Nevada. Much of the large private forest company land derives from acquisitions originating from these early railroad land grants. South of the central western Sierra Nevada, fewer large blocks or intermixtures of private land occur at middle elevations. Below about 3,000 feet in the western Sierra, private lands predominate.

Reserve areas account for 21% of the Sierra Nevada, as indicated in table 1.1.

Table 1.1 (ACTUAL VIEW 9K)

The Sierra Nevada of the Future

The images of the Sierra Nevadasnapshots from the past, words and maps from SNEP, mental images of a mountain rangereveal in sketch the unfolding process that has shaped Sierra Nevada ecosystems. Our view of the Sierra is flawed if we consider todays ecological or social environment to be stable: The old-growth forests we study today developed in a different environment from our current one and are headed into a different future. Many of the forests that we now measure and manage originated under an anomalously wet climate. The water systems we have developed are based on predictions of flow derived from this unusually favorable period. Snapshots of the present may give us misleading pictures of what is needed to support a full range of biotic and human systems in the near and distant future.

If there is natural environmental change, does this give license for humans to act however they like in ecosystems? If ecosystems are always changing, why should it matter if we retain the diversity and function of any specific time and place? It matters because both the rate and the direction of change in natural systems are extremely important to ecosystem sustainability. Plants and animals, and the ecosystems they compose, evolve and adapt to the gradual pace of most environmental change, that is, they produce the successors who are able to survive and prosper. Humans may make conscious decisions to alter the rate and directions of ecosystem change. The important consideration is that we make these decisions with knowledge of potential consequences. As we consider limits to change and tease out the practical meaning of sustainability, we are best prepared when we understand the context of change in the Sierra Nevada.