Ecosystem Management

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Ecosystem Management

• Coupling Natural and Human Systems and the
  Importance of Scale

Adina Merenlender, Environmental Science, Policy,
and Management
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Ecosystem?

• Biological communities associated with a defined
  physical environment.

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Ecosystem Management

•  Ecosystem Management is driven by explicit
  goals, executed by policies, protocols, and
  practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and
  research based on our best understanding of the
  ecological, physical, and social interactions and
  processes necessary to sustain ecosystem
  composition, structure, and function.

• Explicit Goals
• Sustainability
• Interdisciplinary collaborative
• Complex, connected, dynamic
• Humans are a component
• Scale and context
• Adaptive
• Ecological monitoring
• Best available ecological models and understanding

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Sustainability

• environmental health
• economic profitability
• social and economic equity

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Sustainable Use
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Interdisciplinary Collaborative

• Political Science
• Ecology
• Sociology
• Geology
• Hydrology
• Economics
• Planning

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Complex, connected, dynamic

• Determine the extent to which biophysical systems
  are vulnerable to human-generated pressures.
• Determine how social institutions are responsive
  to and responsible for environmental conditions
  and change.
• Estimate levels of probability and uncertainty of
  environmental degradation rather than thresholds.
  

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SCALE Complex interactions among human and
natural systems occur at diverse spatial,
temporal, and organizational scales.

• Spatial or temporal dimension of an object or
  process, characterized by grain and extent
• Grain finest level of spatial resolution
  possible w/ a given data set (e.g. pixel size for
  raster data)
• Extent size of the study area or duration of
  time under consideration
• Cartographic scale ratio of distance on a map to
  distance on the earth surface (e.g. 110,000)

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Ecological Consequences of Scale

• Scale at which measurements are taken influences
  our ability to detect patterns and trends.
• Abiotic and biotic processes vary in their
  operating scale
• Abiotic scale dependence results when physical
  processes produce statistically similar
  aggregations of abiotic resources (e.g. water,
  minerals)
• Biotic scale dependence originates from the
  differential responses of organisms to the
  abundance of a resource
• Organisms operating at different scales may
  perceive vastly different densities and
  arrangements of resources
• Social institutions operate at scales that may
  influenced by the distribution of resources.

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What is a geographic information system (GIS)?
Wells (point)
Rivers (line)
Parcels (polygons)
Soils (polygons)
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GIS Can Integrate Data Taken at Different Scales
and Extrapolate Information From One Scale to
Another

• Most management and restoration projects are
  conducted at the local scale (1200 - 110,000)
• Most data is at the regional (110,000-180,000)
  or global scale (180,000-11,000,000)
• Extrapolating from data with a given grain and
  extent to another area with different dimensions
  is tricky
• Difficult to combined digital data with different
  scales, quality, map projection date of
  production, digital format, classification system
  -- all can lead to error

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Soils data 1250,000 STATSGO vs. 120,000 SURGO
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30-m DEM vs. 10-m DEM (Santa Rosa/Taylor Mountain
area)
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Natural Diversity Data Base Accuracy Polygons
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Temporal Scale
Land cover mapping and monitoring program
generates data that describes the magnitude and
cause of land cover changes.
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Context

• One size does not fit all
• Ecosystem management must be developed in situ

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Adaptive

• Adjusting management based on
• Improved data and/or understanding
• Monitoring results

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Ecological Monitoring How is monitoring
different from inventory, survey, and
surveillance?

• Detecting the degree of deviation from norm or
  control
• Hypothesis testing
• Purpose oriented (primarily consequences of human
  action)
• Monitor indicators to detect differences or
  changes over time (signal)

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Explicit purpose of monitoring

• Biodiversity or ecosystem health monitoring
• Impact monitoring
• Target taxa monitoring
• Compliance monitoring
• Early warning monitoring
• Provide feedback for adaptive management

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Monitoring alone can not usually...

• ascertain the cause of change.
• help decide how much change is acceptable.
• determine threshold values to trigger a change in
  management.
• avoid false alarms.

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Designing a defensible monitoring program

• explicit purpose
• null hypothesis or expected response
• what type of information will be provided
• how will interpretation of the data improve
  management
• justify the selection of indicators and selected
  measures
• analyze the likelihood of detecting a given
  magnitude of change using the proposed protocols
• feasibility assessment including cost and time

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Deficiencies of past monitoring programs

• Minimal foundation in ecological theory/knowledge
  (applied from wrong region)
• No explicit hypotheses
• Little logic to support selection of indicators
• No power analysis
• No connection to decision making

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When the goal is to quantify actual impacts that
specific activities have induced in ecological
systems then need

• a design with sufficient power to distinguish the
  effects of the activity from a diverse set of
  other processes that drive variation in
  ecological
• field studies
• impact vs. control often does not separate
  natural spatial variability from changes due to
  impact
• before-after does not separate natural temporal
  variability from changes due to impact
• traditional Before-After-Control-Impact assume
  the control and impact sites track one another
  perfectly through time

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In closing

• Do not judge data accuracy without accounting for
  spatial and temporal scale.
• Before believing there is no effect always
  estimate the power of detecting the trend of
  interest.
• In order to achieve sustainability we must value
  biodiversity conservation, practice forethought,
  communicate across disciplines, and think
  creatively.
• Tomorrow some models that can help improve our
  understanding.