Implementing Ecosystem Management

The decision-making environment consists of the social, economic, political, and legal context in which an organization operates. This environment determines the goals, values, and constraints for the organization. Organizational policy then translates the mandates of the decision-making environment into specific decision-making processes. A decision-making process is a method or procedure that guides managers through a series of tasks from problem identification and analysis to alternative design and finally alternative selection (Mintzberg et al., 1976). Ideally, decision support systems should not be developed until the ecosystem management decision-making processes they are to support have been articulated. In reality, both the ecosystem management decision processes and the software systems needed to support them are evolving simultaneously, each helping to refine the other.

First generation ecosystem management processes (EMPs) have evolved from two sources: (1) academia where several such processes have been described at a general, conceptual level and their macro-level structures and functions have been identified; and (2) federal forest managers at the field level where numerous, local ad hoc processes have been developed and tested under fire. The academic, theoretical descriptions of EMPs do not supply adequate details to guide the development of decision support systems and lack adequate field testing to determine how they work in practice. The local, ad hoc EMPs are too numerous for effective software-based decision support (approximately 400 ranger districts in the U.S. national forest system each have their own process) and few, if any, have been studied and described formally so that similarities and differences can be identified. Moreover, no particular EMPs have been widely accepted and implemented in federal forest management. It is equally important to devote attention to devising good ecosystem management decision processes as to assuring the quality of the decisions themselves (Ticknor 1993).

Effective EMPs are urgently needed to allow federal land managers to accommodate the continuing rapid change in societal perspectives and goals (Bormann et al., 1993). Ecosystem management represents a shift from simple to complex definitions of the ecosystems we manage (Kohm and Franklin 1997). It will require the developing effective, multi-objective decision support systems to: (1) assist individuals and groups in their decision making; (2) support rather than replace the judgement of the decision makers; and (3) improve the quality, reproducibility, and explainability of the decision process (Janssen 1992; Larsen et al., 1997; Reynolds et al., 1998). The complexity of environmental dynamics over time and space, the overwhelming amounts of data, information, and knowledge in different forms and qualities, and the multiple, often conflicting, management goals virtually guarantee that few individuals or groups can consistently make good decisions without powerful decision support tools (Janssen 1992; Rauscher 1999).

See: Decision making in forest management