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 Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua © Jesse BuffIndividuals and organizations have attempted to define "ecosystem management" since the term was first introduced in the early 1990s. Although many of the key concepts of ecosystem management remain the same, the debate to define ecosystem management still continues today.

Dr. Hanna J. Cornter (2000) Ecosystem management reflects public awareness and acceptance of environmental values, improved scientific understanding of ecological systems, increasing emphasis on ecological concerns such as biodiversity, professional experience with new technologies and leadership models, and changing professional practices that view conditions of the land to be just as relevant as the quantities of outputs that can be produced.


Jerry Franklin (1997) Fundamentally, ecosystem management is managing ecosystems so as to assure their sustainability.

 

N.L. Christensen et al. (1996) Ecosystem management is management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem composition, structure, and function. [from The Report of the Ecological Society of America Committee on the Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management. Ecological Applications 6(3):665-691.]

 

Edward Grumbine (1994) Ecosystem management integrates scientific knowledge of ecological relationships within a complex sociopolitical and values framework toward the general goal of protecting native ecosystem integrity over the long term.

 

Jack Ward Thomas (1994) Ecosystem management is a holistic approach to natural resource management, moving beyond a compartmentalized approach focusing on the individual parts of the forest. It is an approach that steps back from the forest stand and focuses on the forest landscape and its position in the larger environment in order to integrate the human, biological, and physical dimensions of natural resource management. Its purpose is to achieve sustainability of all resources.

 

The Society of American Foresters (1993) Ecosystem management is an ecological approach to forest resources management. It attempts to maintain the complex processes, pathways and interdependencies of forest ecosystems and keep them functioning well overlong periods of time, in order to provide resilience to short-term stress and adaptation to long-term change. Thus, the condition of the forest landscape is the dominant focus, and the sustained yield of products and services is provided within this context.

 

Dale Robertson (1992) Ecosystem management is an ecological approach that will be used to achieve multiple-use management of National Forests and Grasslands. It means that we must blend the needs of people and environmental values in such a way that the National Forests and Grasslands represent diverse, healthy, productive, and sustainable ecosystems.

 

J. Stan Rowe (1992) Ecosystem management is the application of the ecosystem approach in the conservation, management, and restoration of regional and local landscape ecosystems. It means that everyone attends to the conservation and sustainability of ecosystems, instead of sharply focusing on the productivity of individual or competing resources -- which has been our traditional mode of operation.

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