Environmental Accounting of Natural Capital and Environmental Services of the Us National Forest System
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ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING OF NATURAL CAPITAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES OF THE US NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM By ELLIOTT CAMPBELL A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 To my family and my friends, especially those who are no longer with us. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my parents, Dan Campbell and Kathy Trimmer, for their unconditional love and for instilling my love for the natural world. I would also like to thank my grandmother and late step-grandfather, Betty and HT Odum, for fostering my inquisitiveness about the world in which we live, and pioneering the discipline for which I am passionate. Without these people I would not be the person that I am today. My committee chair, Dr. Mark Brown, has been instrumental in the completion of this work. He expanded my understanding at both the theoretical level as well as the fundamental aspects of research. My other committee members, Dr. Matt Cohen and Dr. Janaki Alavalapati, provided excellent feedback and helped me to understand my research questions and the system that I was studying. I would like to thank the United States Forest Service, in particular Dr. Ariel Lugo, Director of the International Institute for Tropical Forestry, for supporting this research and providing funding through cooperative agreement #05-DG-11120101-019 between the USDA, Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry and the Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................3 LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................................7 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................9 ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................11 Statement of the Problem........................................................................................................11 Plan of Study...........................................................................................................................12 Description of the USFS System.....................................................................................15 The United States Forest Service System........................................................................16 Osceola and Deschutes National Forests.........................................................................17 Literature Review ...................................................................................................................20 2 METHODS.............................................................................................................................25 General Methods for Emergy Synthesis.................................................................................25 Spatial and Temporal Boundaries of the Synthesis.........................................................25 The emergy synthesis table ......................................................................................26 Evaluation of flows and storages .............................................................................27 Emergy Synthesis of the USFS...............................................................................................28 Environmental Flows.......................................................................................................28 Purchased Flows..............................................................................................................28 Emdollar Ratio .........................................................................................................29 Services ....................................................................................................................29 Tourism ....................................................................................................................29 Storages ...........................................................................................................................30 Economic Values of Environmental Services and Capital..............................................31 Emergy Synthesis of USFS Components and Subsystems .............................................31 Deschutes: emergy of mountain formation ..............................................................31 Osceola: evaluation of phosphorus storage..............................................................31 Subsystems Evaluated .....................................................................................................32 Emergy Indices and Ratios..............................................................................................32 3 RESULTS...............................................................................................................................36 Yearly Flows of the USFS System .........................................................................................36 USFS Exports .........................................................................................................................37 USFS Capital Assets...............................................................................................................39 4 Environmental Capital.....................................................................................................40 Footnotes in appendix F ..................................................................................................41 Economic Capital ............................................................................................................43 Geologic Capital..............................................................................................................43 Information Capital .........................................................................................................43 Regional Syntheses.................................................................................................................46 Regional Variation..................................................................................................................50 Comparison of Yearly Flow Results from the Case Study Forests ........................................52 Pacific Northwest Region and Deschutes National Forest ..............................................52 Comparison of Results from the USFS Southeast Region and Osceola National Forest............................................................................................................................54 Comparison of Storage Results for Case Study Forests and Regions ....................................56 Pacific Northwest Region and Deschutes National Forest..............................................56 Comparison of Storage Results from the USFS Southeast Region and Osceola NF ......57 Comparison of Emergy and Economic Values.......................................................................58 Relationship of Capital to Driving Emergy............................................................................62 4 DISCUSSION.........................................................................................................................63 Emergy Flows.........................................................................................................................64 Natural Capital........................................................................................................................64 Potential Sources of Error.......................................................................................................65 Intrinsic Nature of Flows and Storages ..................................................................................66 Renewable Emergy and Natural Capital.................................................................................66 Emergy Indices .......................................................................................................................67 Environmental Loading Ratio .........................................................................................67 Emergy Yield Ratio and Emergy Return on Investment.................................................68 Information Storages and Flows......................................................................................68 Comparison of Emergy and Economic Valuation..................................................................69 Regional Syntheses Analysis..................................................................................................71 Comparison of Case Study Forests to Overall Region ...........................................................71 Comparison of Deschutes NF and the Pacific Northwest Region...................................72 Comparison of Osceola and the Southeast Region.......................................................74 Comparison Overview.....................................................................................................76 Scalar Dependence and Significance......................................................................................77