Encyclopedia of Global Resources part 52 provides a wide variety of perspectives on both traditional and more recent views of Earth's resources. It serves as a bridge connecting the domains of resource exploitation, environmentalism, geology, and biology, and it explains their interrelationships in terms that students and other nonspecialists can understand. The articles in this set are extremely diverse, with articles covering soil, fisheries, forests, aluminum, the Industrial Revolution, the . Department of the Interior, the hydrologic cycle, glass, and placer mineral deposits. . | 458 Forest Service . Global Resources Regulation Forest regulation is the process of determining the appropriate size and age structure of the forest over a large area to ensure the continued production of resource values in perpetuity. Regulation also refers to the process of organizing a forest to meet social and economic goals and constraints. One such requirement may be to produce a relatively even flow of forest products over time another may be to ensure a continued supply of high-quality water from a municipal watershed. An industrial forest manager may be required to produce a certain level of fiber to supply a billion-dollar mill employing hundreds of people. The appropriate size and age distributions of trees to best achieve this goal may be quite different from those required to maximize the habitat for a particular animal species. Biological and Ecological Considerations Physical chemical and climatic factors place limits on both the types of plants and animals that can inhabit an area and their productive potential. Forest managers must recognize and be able to develop possible management alternatives given the biological and ecological characteristics of an area. These define the types and mix of products and values that may be produced. Managers must work within these limits to determine the appropriate mix to best meet management goals. For ever y resource it is important to determine appropriate production levels to ensure sustainable production over the long term while maintaining ecosystem structure and function. This is complicated by the fact that production is measured in different units for different resources. For water it may be the annual volume of water per year from a watershed that meets certain quality standards. For wildlife it may be the population levels an area can sustain. Integration Forest management therefore deals with the integration of biological and ecological potential with human economic and social goals and .
