DEFINITION OF DOMINANCE

Definition of Dominance is a form of behavior among individual animals that shows their ability to win aggressive encounters with other animals. These animals may be members of the same species or of different species. Dominance determines which individuals have first choice of resources that are needed to survive and reproduce and that are in limited supply. These resources include food, water, a resting place, or mates. Animals that lose the aggressive encounters or give in to dominant individuals without a fight are called subordinates. Subordinates that are denied use of scarce resources may be among the first to die or to leave an area.

In a group, a particular individual may be dominant to some members and subordinate to others. This results in a dominance hierarchy--that is, a ranking of individuals by their dominance in relation to each other. In many cases, an individual is subordinate to all those ranked above it and dominant to those below it. This type of ranking is called linear dominance hierarchy. However, dominance hierarchies may be more complicated. For example, in circular dominance hierarchy, individual A may be dominant to individual B and B dominant to individual C, but C is dominant to A. Individuals can improve their position in the group's dominance hierarchy as they gain experience or maturity, or as their reproductive condition changes.

Encounters that establish dominance only occasionally include actual fighting. In most cases, these encounters involve only signals that indicate an individual's willingness or ability to win a potential fight. An individual's large size or threatening natural weapons, such as the horns of mountain sheep or the powerful jaws of a wolf, might cause subordinates to give up without a fight.

Dominance differs from territoriality, a form of animal behavior in which an individual or group claims a certain area as its own. A dominant individual usually can win wherever it is.

THE BENEFITS OF AN ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH

These landscape and stand level examples, illustrating the functions of some important forest composition and structures, indicate why practices such as clearcutting and elimination of old growth forests are not consistent with maintaining fully functioning forests. If the degradation caused by clearcutting and removal of old growth forests were more evident, people might be more willing to adopt ecologically responsible approaches to timber management.

However, because forests operate on such long timeframes, and because, for millennia, forests have been building biological legacies through many generations of trees that have lived and died, human activities that remove composition and structures do not immediately appear to be as damaging as they actually are. However, as timber managers continue to degrade composition and structures of forests, from landscape to stand levels, damage to forest functioning becomes cumulative. Eventually this approach leads to degraded ecosystems, which provide few ecological functions, compared to the fully functioning forests they replaced. Because forest degradation occurs relatively slowly, successive generations of human beings inherit degraded forests which they assume to be natural, “healthy” ecosystems. In other words, we don’t live long enough to see the results of our mistakes.

An ecosystem-based approach attempts to avoid loss of forest functioning by maintaining forest composition and structures from the smallest soil bacteria to the landscape patterns of a large forest watershed. We may not understand the functions of particular forest composition and structures; nevertheless, an ecologically responsible approach protects all composition and structures. When parts of the forest are altered during activities such as ecologically responsible timber management or tourism, provisions for the replacement of forest composition and structures are built into ecologically responsible plans and activities.

As well as providing for the protection and maintenance of forest functioning, an ecosystem-based approach fosters the development of diverse, sustainable human economies. Because an ecosystem-based approach creates the least modification to forest ecosystem composition and structures, it provides for the largest diversity of compatible forest uses. In other words, by maintaining trees on the sites where we practice timber management and by ensuring that ecologically viable old growth stands are found in each landscape, we provide an environment where the broadest spectrum of uses, from adventure tourism to timber extraction, can coexist. Such a range of activities is not possible where conventional timber management systems, such as clearcuts and tree plantations, are employed.

From a timber standpoint, because ecologically responsible timber management produces steady supplies of mature wood, the long-term economic benefits exceed those of conventional timber management practices. Mature wood—long-fibred and strong—is superior for many uses, from structural materials and pulp to furniture and fine cabinets. In comparison, short-fibred, juvenile wood is not as strong and will warp and twist easily. Mature wood is produced when the cambium layer (the single layer of cells between the wood and the bark) divides around dead branches or no branches. Obviously, increasing amounts of mature wood are produced as a tree gets larger and older.