Tools and Resources
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
At what point do the key structural or functional aspects identified in Step 1 become threatened and require action, either to avoid the threshold being reached or to bring the system back to a desirable state? These are often challenging questions and the answers are highly dependent on the system of interest and the local context (see the table below). There may be several acceptable alternative states (e.g. woodland of varying age or species structure), but maintenance of the system (i.e. always a form of woodland) may be the goal. Natural systems may not rapidly return to the pre-disturbance state, requiring judgements regarding whether recovery is taking place or if the path is one of degradation, in which case interventions may be required. An acceptable length of time for recovery to the pre-disturbance state should be selected.
Guiding questions and examples for Step 3
|
Guiding questions applicable to all settings |
Conservation organisation woodland |
|
Is the level of acceptable change defined by structure? For example, mortality of certain species or habitat loss. |
Positive:
Negative:
|
|
Is the level of acceptable change defined by function? For example, reduced carbon sequestration or income. |
Positive:
Negative:
|
|
Are the boundaries fuzzy or precise? |
Species change and visitor numbers can be measured for a precise boundary Desired level of natural regeneration is a fuzzy boundary |
|
Are thresholds involved? |
Multiple thresholds, including the required compliment of indicator species to achieve the desired habitat |
|
Are there potential trade-offs or different stakeholder priorities? |
Increase in visitors (desirable for public engagement) could result in site damage and wildlife disturbance |
Scale and position of acceptabilityChange in a system may be more or less acceptable at different levels and scales in different organisations. The group might want to break into smaller groups to consider how a change could affect different stakeholders. For example, if a native tree species is affected by disease, what other species might this have an impact on? People and organisations will be invested with different interests, so take a moment to identify the groups you might not usually consider. Here are some possible questions to think about:
|
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.