Understanding and Managing the Assessment Process

Abstract

Taking an ecological approach to management, or ecosystem management, is a developing approach for managing natural resources within the context of large geogaphic scales and over multiple time frames. Recently, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) (IEMTF 1995) defined an ecosystem as "...an interconnected community of living things, including humans, and the physical environment within which they interact." Understanding how humans affect, and are affected by, ecosystems is critical to understanding how these systems function. The CEQ defined the ecosystem approach as "... a method for sustaining or restoring natural systems and their functions and values. This approach is goal driven, and it is based on collaboratively developed vision of desired future conditions that integrates ecological, economic, and social factors." A fundamental challenge to taking an ecological approach, then, is the need to understand and manage complex ecosystems simultaneously across large and small temporal and spatial scales.

Citation

Lessard, Gene; Archer, Scott; Probst, John R.; Clark, Sandra. 1999. Understanding and Managing the Assessment Process. In: Sexton, W.T.; et. al., eds. Ecological stewardship: a common reference for ecosystem management. vol. 3. Kidlington, Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science Ltd.: 551-562