The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has stimulated much interest in the linkages between the state of ecosystems and human well-being, and resulted in a number of international and national initiatives. For example, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UKNEA) is being widely discussed in research and land use policy communities, and has already influenced domestic policy (UK National Ecosystem...

Vineyards shape important economic, cultural, and ecological systems in many temperate biomes. Like other agricultural systems, they can be multifunctional landscapes that not only produce grapes, but also for example serve as wildlife habitat, sequester carbon, and are places of rich traditions. However, research and management practices often focus mostly on individual, specific ecosystem ser...

1. The provisioning of ecosystem services to society is increasingly under pressure from global change. Changing disturbance regimes are of particular concern in this context due to their high potential impact on ecosystem structure, function and composition. Resilience-based stewardship is advocated to address these changes in ecosystem management, but its operational implementation has remain...

Management of marine resources is supported by extensive use of acoustic data. Ecosystem management requires simultaneous observations of marine organisms and their interactions. The use of quantitative sonar combined with vertical oriented echo sounders is essential: the multi-frequency echosounder data is used to remotely identify acoustic scattering categories and the spatial distribution of...

The evolution of mod& forest resource management is focusing on ecologically-sensitive forest operations. This shift in management strategies is producing a new set of functional requirements for forest operations. Systems to implement ecosystem management prescriptionsmay need to be economically viable over a wider range of piece sizes, for example. Increasing demands for more efficient fiber ...

tion-oriented management activities; and purchasing development rights, conservation easements, and land in fee simple (e.g., Bengston et al. 2004). Current enthusiasm for ecosystem services markets arises in part from an interest in providing still another way to fund landowner incentives. Through markets, landowners could be compensated for ecosystem services their lands produce with funding ...

ecosystems is challenging because park managers cannot accurately determine ecosystem states and predict the outcomes of management actions due to uncertainty. Four sources of uncertainty arise. First, variability in social, demographic, ecological, and economic factors makes it difficult to infer the state of an ecosystem from observed conditions and predict ecosystem responses to management a...