Land Use Concepts and Classification

Human land use affects the environment in many ways

• Land uses that benefit humans
  • Agriculture
  • Housing
  • Recreation
  • Industry
  • Mining
  • Waste disposal
• These activities however are negative towards the environment
  • Mudslides
  • Deforestation
  • Water runoff
• To counter these effects, communities have laws, norms, etc. to regulate the usage of land

Tragedy of the Commons

• The tendency of a shared limited resource to become depleted if its not regulated in some way
  • Ex:
    • Grazing sheep on communal pasture
    • First not many farmers graze sheep, but as time goes on, so does the amount of farmers grazing cattle on this land. Over time, the land is degraded and unusable.
    • No winners
• People have used “commons” as a public land to graze cattle. mine ores, etc.
  • However overuse = bad in long term
  • Humans seek benefit in short-term rather than long-term
• The tragedy of commons applies to any publicly available resource such as
  • Land
  • Air
  • Water

Externalities

• Tragedy of the commons is a result of an economic phenomenon called “negative externality”
• Externality
  • The cost/benefit of a good or service that is not included in the purchase price of that good or service or otherwise accounted for
  • Key word: NOT ACCOUNTED FOR
  • Ex:
    • If a bakery moves next to your house, the smell of bread is positive externality. But the bakers coming at 3 AM and creating a lot of noise is a negative externality
  • Negative externalities are really bad
• One solution that economists came up with is the idea of private land ownership
  • May solve many environmental problems

Maximum Sustainable Yield

• The maximum amount of a renewable resource that can be harvested without compromising the future availability of that resource
  • Maximum harvest that will be replace by population growth
  • MSY varies case by case
  • IMPORTANT:
    • MSY IS THE AMOUNT OF HARVEST THAT ALLOWS THE RESOURCE POPULATION TO BE MAINTAINED AT ROUGHLY 1/2 THE CARRYING CAPACITY OF THE ENVIRONMENT
  • It can be difficult to calculate MSY with certainty as it is difficult to get other info such as birth rates, death rates, carrying capacity, etc.
    • On top of this, MSY calculations can only be verified long after damage is done

Public lands are classified according to their use

International Categories of Public lands

• National Parks
  • Managed for scientific, educational, and recreational use
  • Not used as land for extraction of resources
  • Protect animal and plant species
  • However control burns are common
• Managed Resource by Protected Areas
  • Open for sustained use of
    • Biological
    • Mineral
    • Recreational uses
  • Mining, logging, etc. are allowed
  • Example would be forests
• Habitat or Species Management Areas
  • Habitat or species management areas are actively managed for a lot of reasons.
    • May be in order to maintain biological communities