Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Links

The following is a series of key words and their definitions used in the development of the 1999 Vermont Forest Resource Plan. A majority of these definitions came from existing sources.

Acceptable management practices - In this plan, a series of erosion control measures for timber harvesting operations, as identified in state statutes. The AMPs are the proper method for the control and dispersal of water collecting on logging roads, skid trails, and log landings to minimize erosion and reduce sediment and temperature changes in streams.

Best management practices - A practice or combination of practices determined to be the most effective and practicable means of preventing negative impacts of silvicultural activities.

Biodiversity - The variety of plants and animals, their interrelationships, and the biological and physical systems, communities, and landscapes in which they exist.

Biophysical region - A region with shared characteristics of climate, geology, soils, and natural vegetation. There are currently eight biophysical regions recognized in Vermont.

Conservation - The careful protection, planned management, and use of natural resources to prevent their depletion, destruction, or waste.

Conservation easement - Acquisition of some rights on a parcel of land designed to keep the property undeveloped in perpetuity.

Ecological processes - The relationships between living organisms and their environment. Among these processes are natural disturbances such as periodic fire, flooding, or beaver activity; natural stresses such as disease or insects; catastrophic weather-related events such as severe storms or lightning strikes; or more subtle ongoing processes such as succession, hydrology, and nutrient cycling.

Ecological reserve - A area of land managed primarily for long-term conservation of biodiversity.

Ecosystem - A complex array of organisms, their natural environment, the interactions between them, the home of all living things, including humans, and the ecological processes that sustain the system.

Ecosystem management - The careful and skillful use of ecological, economic, social, and managerial principles in managing ecosystems to produce, restore, or sustain ecosystem integrity, uses, products, and services over the long term.

Endangered species - A species listed on the state or Federal endangered species list. (VSA Title 10, chapter 123). Endangered species are those which are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of their range.

Forest health - Condition in which forest ecosystems sustain their complexity, diversity, resiliency, and productivity.

Fragmentation - Division of a large forested area into smaller patches separated by areas converted to a different land use.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - A computer-based means of mapping lands and resources and communicating values associated with them.

Green certification - A process, sponsored by several international organizations, that promotes sustainable forest management practices, providing a marketplace identifier for forest products certified to have been grown and manufactured in a sustainable manner.

Habitat - A place that provides seasonal or year-round food, water, shelter, or other environmental conditions for an organism, community, or population of plants or animals.

Heritage sites - Sites identified by the Vermont Nongame and Natural Heritage Program of the Department of Fish and Wildlife that have rare, threatened, or endangered species of plants or animals. Heritage sites are identified using a common standards-based methodology which provides a scientific and universally applicable set of procedures for identifying, inventorying, and mapping these species.

Healthy ecosystem - An ecosystem in which structure and functions allow the maintenance of the desired conditions of biological diversity, biotic integrity, and ecological processes over time.

Interior dependent species - Those wildlife species that depend on large, unbroken tracts of forest land for breeding and long-term survival. The term is also often used in conjunction with neotropical migratory bird species requiring large patches of fairly homogeneous habitat for population viability.

Land conservation - The acquisition or protection through easements of land for wildlife habitat, developed state parks, and working forests.

Landscape - In addition to the traditional meaning of the term, in ecology landscape has a specialized meaning: an area composed of interacting and inter-connected ecosystems that are variously repeated because of geology, landform, soils, climate, biota, and human influences throughout the area.

Multiple-use forestry - Any practice of forestry fulfilling two or more objects of management, more particularly in forest utilization (e.g., production of both wood products and deer browse).

Multiple-use management - An on-site management strategy that encourages a complementary mix of several uses on a parcel of land or water within a larger geographic area.

Native - A plant or animal indigenous to a particular locality.

Natural area - Limited areas of land which have retained their wilderness character, although not necessarily completely natural and undisturbed, or have rare or vanishing species of plant or animal life or similar features of interest which are worthy of preservation for the use of present and future residents of the state. They may include unique ecological, geological, scenic, and contemplative recreational areas on state lands.

Natural community - An assemblage of plants and animals that is found recurring across the landscape under similar environmental conditions, where natural processes, rather than human disturbances, prevail.

Old-growth forest - A forest stand in which natural processes and succession have occurred over a long period of time relatively undisturbed by human intervention.

Outdoor recreation - Leisure time activities that occur outdoors or utilize an outdoor areas or facilities.

Stewardship - Caring for land and associated resources with consideration to future generations.

Sustainability - The production and use of resources to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Threatened species - A species listed on the state or Federal threatened species list. Threatened species are those likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of their range.

Traditional uses - Those uses of the forest that have characterized the general area in the recent past and present, including an integrated mix of timber and forest products harvesting, outdoor recreation, and recreation camps or residences.

Watershed - The geographic area within which water drains into a particular river, stream, or body of water. A watershed includes both the land and the body of water into which the water drains.

Wilderness - Areas having pristine and natural characteristics, typically roadless and often with some limits on uses. (This is not the Federal definition of wilderness.)

Working forest - Land used primarily for forestry purposes, but also available for recreation, usually where both managed land and land not presently being managed is present.

Working landscape - A landscape dominated by land used for agricultural and/or forestry purposes.

Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Links