Excerpt
USE of landscapes has expanded at unprecedented rates in recent years. Drainage basins that once were wildlands are now subject to multiple human activities and the growing threats of atmospheric deposition and climatic change. Researchers interested in the environmental impacts of these changes are struggling to deal with the issues of scale and interactive natural and human-induced processes. The time is right for a renewed commitment to research that is broader in its scope and employs unique approaches.
A broader concept
Forests and rangeland have long been managed under the concept of multiple uses. Such activities as timber harvesting, grazing, mining, waste recycling, and recreation often occur together on public land or land in mixed ownership. In some areas, agriculture is encroaching on the steeper slopes of forest and rangeland. Other uses will occuron this land in the future as resource technologies change.
Emissions from coal-fired power plants and urban-industrial complexes contribute to regional atmospheric deposition and climate change. These anthropogenic effects can occur within a drainage basin, or they can interact with natural processes and upland activities and have consequences downstream. Because of these spatial perturbations, agriculture and rural and urban development must be considered as …
Footnotes
Roy C. Sidle is project leader and research hydrologist at the Intermountain Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, 860 North 1200 East, Logan, Utah 84321; (801) 752-1311. Sidle is presently visiting scientist, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan. James W. Hornbeck is research forester at the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, U.S. Forest Service, P.O. Box 640, Durham, New Hampshire 03824; (603) 868-5576.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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