[MCN] Book review: FS insider agrees with conservationists

[Lance Olsen]

Closing 2 paragraphs of review: He concludes the book with a 
"manifesto" that reflects that faith in the Forest Service to 
reestablish its leadership as a steward of public resources. He calls 
on the agency to practice the land ethic put forth by one of its own, 
Aldo Leopold, and to reclaim the vision and leadership exhibited at 
its founding when it symbolized the nascent conservation movement. He 
tries to add detail to these broad statements by recommending 
priorities that would be very familiar to anyone conducting research 
in ecosystem services. The greatest value, he argues, can be obtained 
by pursuing optimization instead of maximization of resources. "The 
Forest Service might not be generating revenue from the vast suite of 
environmental services these lands provided, as we did from logging 
and grazing," he writes, "but environmental services flowing from 
forested, mountainous landscapes will always far exceed the value of 
logging and grazing."

Furnish's writing is clear and cogent and serves the broader purpose 
well. The book itself reflects the accessibility, affordability, and 
high-quality presentation typical of Oregon State University Press. 
The result is an enjoyable read and an important book for anyone 
interested in natural resource management in the late-twentieth 
century.

OPEN ACCESS
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.1262/full
-- 
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"Contrary to the expectation that surviving trees have weathered 
severe drought, the hydraulic deterioration demonstrated here reveals 
that surviving regions of these forests are actually more vulnerable 
to future droughts due to accumulated xylem damage."

WILLIAM R. L. ANDEREGG et al. Drought's legacy: multiyear hydraulic 
deterioration underlies widespread aspen forest die-off and portends 
increased future risk. Global Change Biology (2013) 19, 1188-1196
doi: 10.1111/gcb.12100
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"How fast can our planet's climate change? Too slowly for humans to 
notice, according to the firm belief of most scientists through much 
of the 20th century."

"Today, there is evidence that severe change can take less than a 
decade. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has 
called this reorientation in the thinking of scientists a veritable 
'paradigm shift.'  The new paradigm of abrupt global climate change, 
the committee reported in 2002, 'has been well established by 
research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known 
and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social 
scientists and policymakers.' "

Spencer Weart. "The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change."
Physics Today (American Institute of Physics), August 2003
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_56/iss_8/30_1.shtml
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