Institutions govern both the means by which benefits flow to beneficiaries and the manner by which these beneficiaries absorb the cost of, and reinvest in, the ecological systems that support them. Reinvestment, broadly defined, includes a range of initiatives whose aim is to ensure the continued integrity and function of Sierra Nevada ecosystems. Reinvestment may include mitigation of environmental impacts or rehabilitation of prior environmental degradation. Market institutions used elsewhere to close the loop between consumers and resources are generally underdeveloped or missing in the Sierra Nevada, leaving government institutions as the principal means by which preferences are expressed and reinvestment promoted. Government entities, rather than market mechanisms, manifest preferences and direct reinvestment in the Sierra Nevada.
Institutions differ by purpose, authority, and jurisdiction.
Units are kilometers of boundary between public and private land per square kilometer. The institutional arrangements in the Lake Tahoe Basin, where there are more than seventy different federal, state, and local government entities, epitomize the complexity present in the larger region. Across the Sierra, each institution responds to, and implements, a different array of policies. The picture that emerges is one of byzantine complexity in which institutions involving every layer of government focus on a single component or process of Sierran ecosystems. The Forest Service, guided by these laws and policy, determines timber harvest levels but attainment of these levels is dependent upon congressional appropriations.