Most rural development projects include ecological considerations, and most conservation projects include some reference to sustainable development. However, conservation projects frequently fail because they do not incorporate local communities' perceptions and needs. Many development projects are also unsuccessful because they are not based on adequate ecological assessment. We focus here on ...

Current approaches to conservation and natural-resource management often focus on single objectives, resulting in many unintended consequences. These outcomes often affect society through unaccounted-for ecosystem services. A major challenge in moving to a more ecosystem-based approach to management that would avoid such societal damages is the creation of practical tools that bring a scientifi...

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...

Complex problems often result from the multiple interactions between human activities and ecosystems. The interconnected nature of ecological and social systems should be considered if these “wicked problems” are to be addressed. Ecosystem service approaches provide an opportunity to link ecosystem function with social values, but in practice the essential role that social dynamics play in the ...

In this paper, we propose to view the concept of open government from the perspective of an ecosystem, a metaphor often used by policy makers, scholars, and technology gurus to convey a sense of the interdependent social systems of actors, organizations, material infrastructures, and symbolic resources that can be created in technology-enabled, information-intensive social systems. We use the c...