Environmental Science

. It helps protect certain undeveloped areas of national forests from new road construction and logging to preserve ecosystems. This also helps protect biodiversity, water quality, and allows for limited exceptions for safety and conservation needs.

The different IUCN categories of protected areas are ecological reserves and wilderness areas, national parks, national monuments, habitat and wildlife management areas, cultural or scenic landscapes, and managed resource areas.

Figure 12.10 shows the different places and their rates of deforestation. In the graph we see that Indonesia has the highest rate of deforestation.

DQ 3:

The best use of the land in this scenario would most likely be a balance of all three situations listed. Working ranches keeps land undeveloped and provides a healthy wildlife habitat while conservation groups protect biodiversity, water quality, and more. The suburban home builders group focuses on growing populations and the need for affordable housing. We could mix all of these together by protecting ecological areas and ranching but also managing suburban growth in environmentally safe ways. We could maintain these landscapes through green infrastructure, reforestation and protection of land, sustainable grazing plans, and rotational pastures.

The ranching group contributes towards economic and cultural value and the conservation group focuses on ecosystem protection which involves biodiversity, and the home building focuses on housing and growth. The way we can best use land would be to include all of them; a good balance between all three.