Natural Resources Use and Planning - Assignment Example

_     _ _     _ _     _ Natural Resources: Review Questions What is a natural resource? List three examples. 2. What is the difference between a renewable and non-renewable resource? 3. List three causes of the current environmental crisis. 4. What is the maximum sustainable yield for an organism? 5. Name four impacts humans have on the land. 6. What is a major method of conserving biodiversity? Natural Resources Exercise 1: The southern California Spotted Owl Part A: 1. What does this model predict will happen to the spotted owl metapopulation in the next 20 years? What about in the next 50 years? 2. What is the probability that the owl metapopulation will be reduced to half the initial abundance? What is the probability of extinction? 3. This model assumes that there are no major changes in the habitat over the course of the next 50 years. If there is a decrease in the amount of habitat, how would you expect the results of this model to change? 4. When you run the model, which populations frequently exchange individuals (a line will appear connecting the two populations briefly while the simulation runs if the map is displayed)? 5. Which are likely to be the most important populations for conserving this metapopulation? Are smaller or larger populations more important? Are populations in the middle more important than those on the ends? Part B: 1. What effect does reducing dispersal have on the long-term prognosis for this metapopulation? 2. If there was no dispersal among any of the populations, which would be most likely to go extinct? What proportion of the population would be vulnerable to extinction? 3. Of the three scenarios, which has the smallest impact on the probability of extinction for the owl? Which has the largest probability of declining by half? 4. If you were a landuse planner, what would be your recommendations/requirements of developers, mining and logging companies, etc., regarding this region? 5. Is the probability of extinction a good measure of how vulnerable this metapopulation is to potential impacts? If not, suggest an alternative measure. 6. If you only ran the models for 10 years, how would your perspective on this species change? 7. If the probability of extinction for a species is not 100% should it be protected from adverse impacts? 8. How would you determine when a species and its habitat should be protected (i.e., what criteria)? Natural Resources Exercise 2: Harvesting Bluefin Tuna 1. Is the population growing or declining when no harvest is included in the model? 2. What is the probability of extinction with harvesting for this population versus without harvesting? Would you predict that this population could persist at the current population size when being heavily fished? 3. Which stages appear to be most affected by harvesting? Harvesting which classes will be likely to reduce the long-term sustainability of this fishery? 4. How long (in years) did it take the population, on average, to drop to half of the original population under the original harvest levels? How long did it take to decline to one-tenth of the original population? 5. What is your estimation of the maximum sustainable yield (in terms of proportion harvested at each time step from the selected stages)? 6. Based on these results, how would you convince tuna harvesters to change their harvesting practices to make them more sustainable? Natural Resources: Quiz 1. The view that we (humans) will never run out of resources is  a. Neo-Malthusian.  b. Utopian.  c. Cornucopian.  d. Realism. 2. Which of the following is not an adverse impact caused by humans?  a. Earthquakes  b. Pollution  c. Overexploitation  d. Deforestation 3. Maximum sustainable yield is the maximum number of individuals that can be removed from a population while:  a. maintaining the same total abundance.  b. allowing for long-term persistence of the species.  c. not causing the population to decline.  d. obtaining the largest possible harvest. 4. Which of the following species is likely to have the highest maximum sustainable yield?  a. Elephants  b. Oaks  c. Skarks  d. Corn Short answer questions: 1. Name three natural resources that are currently considered vulnerable to loss (i.e, nearly depleted) or pollution. 2. What are two factors that might limit a populations growth, as in density dependent growth? Do either of these factors affect human population growth? 3. What is a metapopulation? Give an example of a species that exists in a metapopulation. 4. Suppose you are designing a reserve for a species that lives in many populations connected by occasional dispersal, but only some of them can be protected from development and resource extraction. What are some of the factors that you need to consider in determining which populations you should protect? 5. You have studied a particular species and determined the maximum sustainable yield is 5% of the total abundance annually. If each hunter takes only 5% of the total abundance (there are 25 hunters total), will this species be harvested sustainably? Why or why not? If not, how would you convince the hunters to change their harvesting practices? Read More