Adaptive management for soil ecosystem services

Abstract

Ecosystem services provided by soil include regulation of the atmosphere and climate, primary (including agricultural) production, waste processing, decomposition, nutrient conservation, water purification, erosion control, medical resources, pest control, and disease mitigation. The simultaneous production of these multiple services arises from complex interactions among diverse aboveground and belowground communities across multiple scales. When a system is mismanaged, non-linear and persistent losses in ecosystem services can arise. Adaptive management is an approach to management designed to reduce uncertainty as management proceeds. By developing alternative hypotheses, testing these hypotheses and adjusting management in response to outcomes, managers can probe dynamic mechanistic relationships among aboveground and belowground soil system components. In doing so, soil ecosystem services can be preserved and critical ecological thresholds avoided. Here, we present an adaptive management framework designed to reduce uncertainty surrounding the soil system, even when soil ecosystem services production is not the explicit management objective, so that managers can reach their management goals without undermining soil multifunctionality or contributing to an irreversible loss of soil ecosystem services.

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Protected areas as social‐ecological systems: perspectives from resilience and social‐ecological systems theory

“…), and the trade‐offs in shifting management focus across scales (Birgé et al. ); (3) managing perturbations to remain within expected levels, while avoiding problematic feedbacks to the social and political components of protected areas and their surroundings; (4) learning how to work with, and balance, effective biodiversity conservation against the political and socioeconomic elements of protected areas (such as managing human–wildlife conflict, tourist demand for greater access to wilderness areas, poaching, and budgetary restrictions); and (5) managing and coping with spatial elements of resilience, such as habitat connectivity and exchanges with the surrounding landscape.…”

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“…If, however, the level of disturbance exceeds its resilience, the system will reorganize into an alternative state [18]. Often this reorganization results in significantly fewer and/or less desirable goods and services, which may be unanticipated by humans who depend upon those services to maintain quality of life standards [19]. The reorganization is also often marked by a loss of biodiversity and overall ecological integrity.…”