Sir Roland Wilson Scholar, The Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Australia; Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Australia; Australian Department of Defence, Russell, ACT, 2600, Australia.
Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Australia.
J Environ Manage. 2017 Dec 15;204(Pt 1):486-493. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.09.029. Epub 2017 Sep 18.
Military Training Areas (MTAs) cover at least 2 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface and occur in all major biomes. These areas are potentially important for biodiversity conservation. The greatest challenge in managing MTAs is balancing the disturbance associated with military training and environmental values. These challenges are unique as no other land use is managed for these types of anthropogenic disturbances in a natural setting. We investigated how military training-related disturbance is best managed on MTAs. Specifically, we explored management options to maximise the amount of military training that can be undertaken on a MTA while minimising the amount of environmental disturbance. MTAs comprise of a number of ranges designed to facilitate different types of military training. We simulated military training-related environmental disturbance at different range usage rates under a typical range rotation use strategy, and compared the results to estimated ecosystem recovery rates from training activities. We found that even at relatively low simulated usage rates, random allocation and random spatial use of training ranges within an MTA resulted in environmental degradation under realistic ecological recovery rates. To avoid large scale environmental degradation, we developed a decision-making tool that details the best method for managing training-related disturbance by determining how training activities can be allocated to training ranges.
军事训练区（MTAs）至少覆盖了地球陆地表面的 2%，并存在于所有主要的生物群落中。这些区域对于生物多样性的保护具有重要意义。管理 MTAs 的最大挑战是平衡与军事训练相关的干扰和环境价值。这些挑战是独特的，因为在自然环境中，没有其他土地用途是为了应对这种人为干扰而进行管理的。我们研究了如何在 MTAs 上最好地管理与军事训练相关的干扰。具体来说，我们探讨了管理选项，以最大限度地增加可以在 MTA 上进行的军事训练量，同时最小化环境干扰量。MTAs 由许多靶场组成，旨在促进不同类型的军事训练。我们在典型的靶场轮转使用策略下，模拟了不同靶场使用率下与军事训练相关的环境干扰，并将结果与训练活动的估计生态系统恢复率进行了比较。我们发现，即使在相对较低的模拟使用率下，在 MTA 内随机分配和随机空间使用训练靶场也会导致环境退化，而在现实的生态恢复率下。为了避免大规模的环境退化，我们开发了一个决策工具，通过确定如何分配训练活动到训练靶场，详细说明了管理与训练相关的干扰的最佳方法。
