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Detecting Ecosystem Stress and Declining Integrity: Indicators and Benchmarks

Learn about indicators and benchmarks for detecting ecosystem stress and declining integrity, and how they are used to assess ecosystem condition and management effectiveness.

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Detecting Ecosystem Stress and Declining Integrity: Indicators and Benchmarks

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  1. Detecting Ecosystem Stress and Declining Integrity: Indicators and Benchmarks NR 205 – Ecosystem Management

  2. What do we measure to tell us if we have a healthy ecosystem? Indicator = a characteristic of the environment that, when measured, quantifies the magnitude of stress, habitat characteristics, degree of exposure to the stressor, or the degree of ecological response to the exposure (US EPA)

  3. Ecosystem Indicators • An ecosystem indicator can be any measure that provides information about the quality or condition of the ecosystem or the effectiveness of management. • Because all ecosystem components and processes cannot be measured and evaluated, ecological indicators are used to determine ecosystem condition with a reduced set of measurements that can represent or “indicate” the overall state of the system. (Watzin, Smyth, Cassell, Manning, Hession, and Wang )

  4. Ecological Integrity: have to specific about what “integrity” means and how it is measured ICBEMP (1996): Integrity defined as “a mosaic of plant and animal communities consisting of well-connected, high-quality habitats that support a diverse assemblage of native and desired non-native species, the expression of potential life histories and taxonomic linkages, and the taxonomic and genetic diversity necessary for long-term persistence and adaptation in a variable environment. Generally, conditions before Euro-American settlement (pre-1800s) provide the standard for evaluating the presence and functioning of ecological components and processes.”

  5. Ecologically relevant Politically/socially relevant Measurable Statistically Sound Interpretable Cost-effective Nondestructive Historical data available Anticipatory Appropriate scale Not redundant of other indicators Indicator Characteristics

  6. PRESSURESTATERESPONSEFRAMEWORK Human activities exertPRESSURESon the ecosystem TheSTATEof the ecosystem is impacted ManagementRESPONSE seeks to reduce negative impacts on the ecosystem

  7. Little Moose Lake Trib. 1: Full Stand Visualization

  8. Adirondack Park Land-Use Land use in the park

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