文章基本信息

标题：Growth and Collapse of a Resource System: an Adaptive Cycle of Change in Public Lands Governance and Forest Management in Alaska
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作者：Colin M. Beier ; Amy Lauren Lovecraft ; F. Stuart Chapin 等
期刊名称：Ecology and Society
印刷版ISSN：1708-3087
电子版ISSN：1708-3087
出版年度：2009
卷号：14
期号：2
出版社：The Resilience Alliance
摘要：Large-scale government efforts to develop resources for societal benefit have oftenexperienced cycles of growth and decline that leave behind difficult social and ecological legacies. Tounderstand the origins and outcomes of these failures of resource governance, scholars have applied theframework of the adaptive cycle. In this study, we used the adaptive cycle as a diagnostic approach to tracethe drivers and dynamics of forest governance surrounding a boom–bust sequence of industrial forestmanagement in one of the largest-scale resource systems in U.S. history: the Tongass National Forest insoutheastern Alaska. Our application of the adaptive cycle combined a historical narrative tracing dynamicsin political, institutional, and economic subsystems and a longitudinal analysis of an indicator of overallsystem behavior (timber harvests). We found that federal policies in concert with global market changesdrove transformative change in both forest governance (policy making) and forest management (practices),through creation and dissolution of subsidized long-term lease contracts. Evidence of the systemic resilienceprovided by these leases was found in the analysis of industry responses to market volatility before andafter Tongass-specific federal reforms. Although the lease contracts stabilized the Tongass system for aperiod of time, they fostered a growing degree of rigidity that contributed to a severe industrial collapseand the subsequent emergence of complex social traps. Broader lessons from the Tongass suggest thatlarge-scale changes occurred only when the nested economic and policy cycles were in coherence, and asystemic effort to minimize social and ecological variability ultimately resulted in catastrophic collapse ofgovernance. This collapse resulted in a pervasive and challenging legacy that prevents Tongassreorganization and limits the adaptive capacity of the larger social–ecological system of southeasternAlaska. Although this legacy has inhibited system renewal for two decades, recent trends indicate theemergence of new opportunities for progress toward sustainable governance of the Tongass National Forest
关键词：adaptive cycle; Alaska; forest management; resource governance; rigidity traps; U.S. National;Forests