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Adaptive management for ecosystem services (j/a)
Citation:
Birge, H., C. Allen, A. Garmestani, AND K. Pope. Adaptive management for ecosystem services (j/a). JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 183(Part 2):343-352, (2016).
Impact/Purpose:
Highlights • Ecosystem services are fundamental to human well-being. • Management of natural resources is necessary regardless of uncertainty. • Ignoring tradeoffs among ecosystem services can create unwanted management outcomes. • Ignoring cross-scale interactions among ecosystem services can also create unwanted outcomes. • Adaptive management can be used to understand cross-scale tradeoffs among ecosystem services.
Description:
Management of natural resources for the production of ecosystem services, which are vital for human well-being, is necessary even when there is uncertainty regarding system response to management action. This uncertainty is the result of incomplete controllability, complex internal feedbacks, and non-linearity that often interferes with desired management outcomes, and insufficient understanding of nature and people. Adaptive management was developed to reduce such uncertainty. We present a framework for the application of adaptive management for ecosystem services that explicitly accounts for cross-scale tradeoffs in the production of ecosystem services. Our framework focuses on identifying key spatiotemporal scales (plot, patch, ecosystem, landscape, and region) that encompass dominant structures and processes in the system, and includes within- and cross-scale dynamics, ecosystem service tradeoffs, and management controllability within and across scales. Resilience theory recognizes that a limited set of ecological processes in a given system regulate ecosystem services, yet our understanding of these processes is poorly understood. If management actions erode or remove these processes, the system may shift into an alternative state unlikely to support the production of desired services. Adaptive management provides a process to assess the underlying within and cross-scale tradeoffs associated with production of ecosystem services while proceeding with management designed to meet the demands of a growing human population.
