During the 1990s, the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service shifted from commodity production management to ecosystem-based management (Overbay, 1992). Although definitions of ecosystem-based mana-gement vary by objectives, the principle had four primary elements: (1) maintaining viable populations of native species, (2) representing native ecosystems across their range of natu...

Economics is an evolving and emerging filed of study, so is the management of ecosystems. As such, this paper delineates the co-evolution of economic evaluation that reflects the various recognized ecosystem management approaches of anticipative, adaptive and capacitive ecosystem management. Each management approach is critiqued and from this theoretical analysis an emergent approach for the ma...

Addressing the environmental challenges of the 21st century requires substantial changes to the way modern society views and manages ecosystems. In particular, many authors contend that fundamental transformation of the largely sectoral, expert-centered ecosystem-management institutions of modern, Western societies is needed. There is increasing agreement that more adaptive, integrated, collabo...

While ecosystem approaches to management focus on broad spatial scales, decision makers increasingly recognize that implementation must occur at the local level with local land use decisions. This article examines the ability of local comprehensive plans in Florida to incorporate the principles of ecosystem management. It seeks to understand how comprehensive plans can effectively contribute to...

The evolving concept of ecosystem management k tie focus of much current debate To clartfi discussion and provide a framework for implementation, I trace the historical development of ecosystem management, provide a working definition, and summarize dominant themes taken mm an t&ensive literature revieut. The general goal of maintaining ecological integrity is discussed along with five specific...

In the face of mounting confrontation and after almost 20 years of increasingly contentious public unhappiness with the management of National Forests, the USDA Forest Service officially adopted ecosystem management as a land management paradigm (Overbay, 1992). Other federal forest land management agencies, such as the USDI Bureau of Land Management, the USDI National Park Service, the USDI Fi...

Some state governments in the US are beginning to adopt ecosystem management policies and practices for conserving natural resources. For the most part, the policies are consistent with the concept of sustaining both economies and the environment. In the western US, state-level ecosystem management programs are meant to increase the influence that states have on the Federal Ecosystem Management...

Sustainable Ecosystem Management (SEM) is one of the ‘four challenges’ for ecosystem services (ES) to be addressed by OpenNESS; the others relate to human well-being, competitiveness and governance. The challenge is to manage ecosystems in such a way that they can sustainably deliver an optimal combination of ecosystem services both today and into the future, with resilience to environmental an...

casted the increasing need for fisheries managers to take species interactions into account. It is now widely recognized that ecosystem effects need to be considered in managing fisheries (Pauly 1998, Beamish and Mahnken 1999, Gislason et al. 2000). Steele (1996) concluded that a “regime shift in fisheries management” is required if one is to manage fisheries successfully in the context of ecos...