Land Use and Forestry in AP Environmental Science (Unit 5)

Tragedy of the Commons

Overuse and degradation of a shared resource because individuals gain direct benefits from using more while the costs of overuse are shared by everyone.

Common-pool resource

A resource that is difficult to exclude people from using and is rival in consumption (one person’s use reduces what is available to others).

Rival in consumption

A characteristic of a resource where one user’s consumption reduces the amount or quality available to other users.

Open-access resource

A shared resource with weak or no enforcement of rules; high risk of overuse because many users can access it with little accountability.

Governance (of common resources)

Rules and institutions that manage a shared resource (e.g., clear boundaries, monitoring, penalties, and shared decision-making) to reduce overuse.

Incentive structure (commons mechanism)

The pattern where benefits of extra use are concentrated on the individual, while costs of overuse are distributed across the group, making overuse a “rational” individual choice.

Regulation and enforcement

Policies that prevent overuse through mechanisms like harvest limits, permits, protected areas, monitoring, and penalties for illegal logging.

Market-based approaches (resource use)

Using prices or fees to change behavior (e.g., charging for use) to encourage sustainable resource extraction.

Stumpage fees

Fees charged for the right to harvest timber, intended to create an economic cost to extraction and incentivize sustainable use.

Property rights / land tenure

Assigning clear responsibility for land or resource management (private ownership or community forestry), which can reduce open-access pressure but does not guarantee sustainability.

Community-based management

Local management of a shared resource using community rules, monitoring, and shared benefits to align short-term actions with long-term stewardship.

Sustainable forestry certification

Programs that label wood products from better-managed forests, using consumer and market pressure to promote more sustainable practices.

Ecosystem services

Benefits people receive from ecosystems, including provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services.

Provisioning services

Ecosystem services that provide products such as timber, fuelwood, food, and medicines.

Regulating services

Ecosystem services that regulate environmental conditions, such as carbon storage, water filtration, and flood reduction.

Supporting services

Ecosystem services that maintain ecosystem function, such as soil formation, nutrient cycling, and habitat for biodiversity.

Cultural services

Nonmaterial ecosystem benefits such as recreation, aesthetics, and spiritual value.

Deforestation

Removal of forest cover followed by long-term conversion to non-forest land use (e.g., cropland or urban land).

Forest degradation

Decline in a forest’s ecological quality (e.g., reduced biodiversity, soil damage, fragmentation) even if the area is still classified as forest.

Fragmentation

Breaking a continuous habitat into smaller patches, often due to logging roads and multiple cut areas, which can reduce biodiversity.

Edge effects

Altered conditions at habitat boundaries (more light, wind, temperature swings, invasives, and predation) that can harm interior forest species.

Clearcutting

A timber harvest method that removes most or all trees in an area at once, temporarily leaving little to no canopy cover and causing high disturbance.

Sedimentation

Soil particles carried by runoff into waterways, which increases turbidity and can smother aquatic habitat and spawning beds.

Riparian buffer (buffer strip)

Vegetated area left along streams to stabilize banks, filter sediment, reduce erosion, and provide shade that helps maintain water temperature.

Sustainable forestry

Forest management that maintains ecological functions over time by harvesting at regenerative rates, protecting riparian areas, minimizing soil/road impacts, conserving biodiversity, and supporting regeneration.