Strategies for Planning Landscape Management

Nancy M. Diaz, USDA Forest Service, Portland, Oregon

Natural resource agencies and organizations have used diverse approaches for landscape-scale planning. For the USDA Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest, the Watershed Analysis process mandated by the Northwest Forest Plan has provided an avenue for extensive experimentation in analysis and planning at the landscape scale. Some examples, like the Augusta Creek Landscape Plan (Blue River Ranger District, Willamette National Forest) emphasize natural disturbance processes, combined with other factors, as the template for building strategies. Others, mirroring the Northwest Forest Plan itself, have a conservation biology orientation, focusing on providing finer-scale protection and connectivity for late-successional species. Still others, like the Little Applegate project (Applegate Ranger District, Rogue River National Forest) encompass multiple landowners and include a wide range of ecological, social and economic factors. The "best" examples include a clear rationale for delineation of the analysis area, an explicit articulation of target landscape conditions, and an analysis that is landform-based, and addresses the relationships between disturbances and vegetation patterns. Plans are further improved when they tier to higher-scale guidance, and lower-scale implementation schedules.

Keywords: landscape ecology, landscape planning, watershed analysis.