Ecosystem management is an integrative, adaptive method for planning and implementing interventions in ecological systems to sustain or restore their structure, function, composition, and services over the long term. It emphasizes system-level objectives, such as maintaining biodiversity, ecological integrity, and resilience, rather than optimizing single components or outputs. Methodologically, it combines ecological modeling, long-term monitoring, stakeholder involvement, and scenario-based decision analysis within an adaptive management cycle of hypothesis-driven actions and iterative evaluation. Ecosystem management explicitly incorporates spatial heterogeneity, cross-scale ecological processes, and uncertainty, and often uses tools such as GIS-based landscape analysis, environmental indicators, and decision-support systems to guide management actions and evaluate trade-offs among competing ecological and socio-economic goals.
In 2019 and again in 2021, Penn State researchers in the Department of Geography walked a series of 1,000 square foot plots in California's Lassen Volcanic National Park. The goal was to see how the forest that's hands-off ...
Ecology
Mar 4, 2026
0
15
Funding sustained, effective management of marine protected areas is one of ocean conservation's most stubborn problems. Now, a new study from researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography links fish recovery ...
Ecology
Mar 4, 2026
0
12
Native forest restoration usually starts with faster growing "nurse plants" that provide shelter under which to plant bigger trees—but new research suggests some big canopy trees can be planted early too. Scientists monitored ...
Ecology
Mar 3, 2026
0
86
The Florida Everglades is a complicated climate actor. The 1.5-million-acre wetland system remains a carbon sink, removing an average of 13.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, but the system ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 2, 2026
0
21
Protected natural areas across Europe are changing. Climate change, with rising temperatures and heavy rainfall, is turbocharging the growth of shrubs and trees, choking the flowers and insects that need the light and heat ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 2, 2026
1
555
A new study has revealed a critical gap between global promises to restore forests and what is happening on the ground for the communities who depend on, manage and care for them. The research, led by researchers from The ...
Ecology
Feb 26, 2026
0
10
Researchers at Murdoch University have found that artificial waterbodies could play a crucial role in slowing the decline of Carter's freshwater mussel (Westralunio carteri), a vulnerable species of freshwater mussel found ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 23, 2026
0
38
On World Wetlands Day, the recent report released by the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory (MWO) warns that despite their vital importance for populations and biodiversity, Mediterranean wetlands remain fragile ecosystems, ...
Environment
Feb 19, 2026
0
21
Fire is a natural and essential part of the Australian ecological landscape, with many native plant species regenerating after fire that occurs under the right conditions. However, a new study, "Ecological Resilience of Restored ...
Ecology
Feb 18, 2026
0
13
New research has revealed the biggest threats driving species toward extinction in northern San José, Costa Rica. Led by Newcastle University, the study found that the greatest potential to reduce species extinction risk ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 16, 2026
0
20
