Clearfell controversies and alternative timber harvest designs: how acceptability perceptions vary between Tasmania and the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Perceptions of the acceptability of alternative "variable retention" timber harvests, that keep trees standing in harvested areas, were compared between regions beset by major forestry conflicts. Data from similar studies of similar harvest systems were compared between Oregon and Tasmania. These comparisons were related to attitudes and to differences in ecosystems, silvicultural prescriptions, forestry outcomes, aesthetics, and social-political context.

Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda.

Cultural ecosystem services (ES) are consistently recognized but not yet adequately defined or integrated within the ES framework. A substantial body of models, methods, and data relevant to cultural services has been developed within the social and behavioral sciences before and outside of the ES approach. A selective review of work in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance demonstrates opportunities for operationally defining cultural services in terms of socioecological models, consistent with the larger set of ES.

In-stand scenic beauty of variable retention harvests and mature forests in the U.S. Pacific Northwest: the effects of basal area, density, retention pattern and down wood.

Tensions between amenity- and timber-based economies in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest motivated a study of scenic beauty inside mature forests and timber harvests.