Asymmetric Ecological and Economic Responses for Rangeland Restoration: A Case Study of Tree Thickening in Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Ecological and economic responses and “thresholds” have considerable relevance to sound rangeland management and monitoring, particularly for pre- venting soil and vegetation degradation or restor- ing lost productivity once damage has occurred. Both kinds of thresholds relate to points at which some kind of manage- ment intervention is either warranted or might no longer be worthwhile, and this is particularly pertinent to the context of brush or timber management. Ecological thresholds reveal de ciencies in land resource management and are well illus- trated by state-and-transition models that describe shifts in range condition states with increasing gradients of manage- ment pressure or disturbance.1 Economic thresholds typically involve the interplay of diminishing bene ts and increasing costs and draw heavily on the weed and pests management literature for agricultural crops.