Ecosystem Approaches

1. Ecosystem Approaches 鄭先祐(Ayo) 國立台南大學 環境與生態學院 教授 Japalura@hotmail.com

2. Introduction • Ecological systems are vastly complex, thus difficult to understand in their entirety. • Improving human welfare requires ecosystem-based management to secure the ecosystem services on which human livelihoods depend; • biodiversity conservation must be an integral part of that socioeconomic development. • We often cannot accomplish our goals by focusing on only part of an ecosystem.

3. Fig. 13.1 A conceptual basis for ecosystem management.

4. Contents • Key elements of an ecosystem approach • Biophysical ecosystems as appropriate management units • Understanding ecosystem dynamics and resilience • Adaptive management: preparing for change in conservation practice • Should ecosystem approaches mimic natural processes? • The critical role of participatory decision-making processes • Future direction in ecosystem-based conservation

5. Supplements I • Essay 13.1 marine ecosystem-based management: transforming US ocean policy • Box 13.1 using fire as a natural process in ecosystem management • Box 13.2 natural community conservation planning

6. Supplements II • Case study 13.1 ecosystem management on “people’s land” in the US. • Case study 13.2 Coral bleaching: managing for resilience in a changing world • Case study 13.3 large-scale ecosystem management: the Chesapeake bay • Case study 13.4 the everglades: trials in ecosystem management

7. Key elements of an ecosystem approach • The temporal dimension is expanded • The spatial dimension is expanded • The human dimension is expanded

8. Fig. 13.2 Ecosystem management as an expansion of traditional natural resource management in three dimensions.

9. Table 13.1 what is a stakeholder? • Have a real or perceived interest in the resource, its use, its protection, or its users. • Are dependent on a resource(e.g., subsistence users, sole means of livelihood) • Have a belief that management decisions will directly or indirectly affect them • Are located in or near areas about which decisions are being made • Pay for the decision • Are in a position of authority to review the decisions.

10. Examples of ecosystem approaches • Convention on the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources (CCAMLR) • In 1980, nations with interests in the natural resources of the Antarctic region together adopted a treaty to ensure cooperative oversight and conservation of these resources, and created the first ecosystem approach to conservation and management. • Taking force in 1982, CCAMLR uses a precautionary approach to preventing ecosystem degradation from exploitation of a subset of species.

11. CCAMLR

12. Northwest forest plan (NWFP) • NWFP was created in 1994 to manage late-successional and old-growth forests within the range of the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) in the northwestern US. • After years of stormy conflict and heated court battles the Clinton Administration successfully brokered an agreement among representatives of public agencies, timber interests, conservation groups and affected citizens to adopt the NWFP as a mechanism for continued management of the region.

13. Northwest forest plan (NWFP) • A system of reserves to protect these ecosystems, an Aquatic Conservation Strategy to conserve pacific salmon and provide connectivity among protected areas, management for sustainable timber extraction, employment programs for rural communities and tribes in restoration activities, and guidelines for adaptive management fo the forest resources across the region. • NEFP incorporated conservation principles of maintaining (1) connectivity across the landscape; (2) landscape heterogeneity; (3) structural complexity; and (4) the integrity of aquatic systems.

14. The key actions for ecosystem management • Develop a shared vision of the desired ecosystem condition that takes into account existing social and economic conditions in the ecosystem, and identify ways in which all parties can contribute to, and benefit from, achieving ecosystem goals. • Develop coordinated approaches among federal agencies to accomplish ecosystem objectives, collaborating on a continuous basis with state, local and tribal governments, and other stakeholders to address mutual concerns. • Use ecological approaches that restore or maintain the biological diversity and sustainability of the ecosystem.

15. The key actions for ecosystem management • Support actions that incorporate sustained economic, sociocultural, and community goals. • Respect and ensure private property rights and work cooperatively with private landowners to accomplish shared goals. • Recognize that ecosystems and institutions are complex, dynamic, characteristically heterogeneous over space and time, and constantly changing.

16. The key actions for ecosystem management • Use an adaptive approach to management to achieve desired goals and a new understanding of ecosystems. • Integrate the best science available into the decision-making process, while continuing scientific research to improve the knowledge base. • Establish baseline conditions for ecosystem functioning and sustainability against which change can be measured; monitor and evaluate actions to determine if goals and objectives are being achieved.

17. Table 13.2 Twelve principles of Ecosystem Approach and 5 points of operational guidance adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity • The objectives of management of land, water, and living resources are a matter of societal choice. • Management should be decentralized to the lowest appropriate level. • Ecosystem managers should consider the effects of their activities on adjacent and other ecosystems. • There is usually a need to understand and manage the ecosystem in an economic context and • a. reduce market distortions that adversely affect biological diversity • b. align incentives to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. • c. internalize costs and benefits in the given ecosystem

18. Conservation of ecosystem structure and function, to maintain ecosystem services, should be a priority target. • Ecosystems must be managed within the limits of their functioning. • The ecosystem approach should be undertaken at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales. • Recognizing the varying temporal scales and lag-effects that characterize ecosystem processes, objectives for ecosystem management should be set for the long term. • Management must recognize change is inevitable.

19. The ecosystem approach should seek the appropriate balance between, and integration of, conservation and use of biological diversity. • The ecosystem approach should consider all forms of relevant information. • The ecosystem approach should involve all relevant sectors of society and scientific disciplines.

20. Five points of operational guidance • Focus on the functional relationships and processes within ecosystems. • Enhance benefit-sharing • Use adaptive management practices. • Carry out management actions at the scale appropriate for the issue being addressed, with decentralization to lowest level, as appropriate. • Ensure inter-sectoral cooperation.

21. Biophysical ecosystems as appropriate management units • Management areas generally encompass more than a single type of biophysical ecosystem.

22. Fig. 13.4 Ecosystem management attempts to involve all stakeholders that affect a large ecosystem and whom are affected by management practices within that system.

23. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) • The GYE includes several biophysical ecosystems, coniferous forests, grasslands, hot springs, rivers, lakes, grazing rangelands, and agricultural fields. • The management logic is this network of biophysical ecosystems linked through ecological interactions and through social institutions.

24. Fig. 13.5 the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

25. Understanding ecosystem dynamics and resilience • Ecosystems are dynamic, not static and the limits to ranges of variation in ecosystem structure and function must be identified. • The importance of variation and disturbance is illustrated in a model developed by Holling (1995) , who discussed the constructive role that variation and disturbance play in maintaining the integrity of ecosystem function (Fig. 13.6)

26. Fig. 13.6 Holling’s model: the functional stage of ecosystem development and the flow of events between them.

27. Adaptive management • Management that is approached as an experiment, and that responds in creative and innovative ways to changes in complex systems, is adaptive management. • US natural resource agencies have begun to recognize the need to build more flexibility into local management and to seek feedback from their management expetiments.

28. Fig. 13.7 the adaptive management cycle allows for continual monitoring and refinement of management objectives.

29. Fig 13.8 Ecopath and other mass balance models are often developed to include trophic groups of species and their connections to one another, and to human effects them through environmental change and direct exploitation.

30. Should ecosystem approaches mimic natural processes? • 很難獲得正確的數據顯示過去自然的變動和干擾情況，因此實際上很難去執行模仿自然的力量。 • 自然的變動和干擾包括，火、暴風雨、洪水、旱災等。 • This is quite acceptable if we pursue such disturbance regimes in an adaptive manner with a willingness to continuously learn from our management experiments and improve our methods. (練習、實驗和學習)

31. The critical role of participatory decision-making processes • Principalstakeholders are those people whose livelihoods, residences, or financial or other interests are connected to the management area, as well as those institutions-public and private- with activities in the management area. • Principal stakeholders should play major roles in the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the ecosystem management plan. • Participation by minor stakeholders is best served through forums for public commentary.

32. A contradiction frequently exists when stakeholders are brought into decision making. • Individuals often make decisions about resource use that are based on short-term and self-interest perspectives. • For participatory decision making to contribute to ecosystem sustainability, mechanisms need to be found to balance self interest with the overriding need for resource sustainability.

33. Effective ecosystem approaches involve a willingness to give up some degree of control. • Much of the history of natural resource management is a history of control and domination: of people, of land, of resources, of other organizations. • This is antithetical (對立的) to good ecosystem management, wherein cooperation, consensus, and inclusion are surer roads to success.

34. An ecosystem approach requires a greater degree of partnerships (夥伴關係) among stakeholders, including international collaboration, inter-agency cooperation at all levels of government, private citizen advocacy groups, research scientists, business interests, and nongovernmental organizations. • Ecosystem-based conservation also identify people as integral parts of the ecosystem.

35. Future directions in ecosytem-based conservation • Develop clear hypotheses about the nature of structuring factors in ecosystems and how management of those factors affects community structure and the outcomes for human social and economic welfare. • Explicitly model ecosystem-human interactions and test management with such models. • Execute the best in adaptive management in which we set up monitoring and managements as experiments as much as possible via instituting controls and pre- and post-management data collection. • Explicitly confront uncertainty through sensitivity analyses, and “ what if” discussions.

36. Supplements II • Case study 13.1 ecosystem management on “people’s land” in the US. • Case study 13.2 Coral bleaching: managing for resilience in a changing world • Case study 13.3 large-scale ecosystem management: the Chesapeake bay • Case study 13.4 the everglades: trials in ecosystem management

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