PARENT SESSION
Special Session - Multiple Scales for Sustainable Results - Morning Session Friday, April 2, 2004 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Apollo Room 7

This session will highlight recent research that incorporates the use of multiple scales and innovative environmental accounting to better inform decisions that affect sustainability, resilience, and vulnerability at all scales. Effective decision-making involves assessment at multiple scales and quantification of the full range of environmental costs and benefits associated with multiple decision-criteria. Work on a Regional scale contributes to local decision-making by extending the horizon such that environmental stresses that progress across the landscape (e.g. land use change, atmospheric deposition, spread of non-indigenous species) can be evaluated within the context of current and future cumulative stresses. Similarly, small localized actions add up to regional impacts (e.g. permitting of small point sources of atmospheric pollutants, linking of green space to provide habitat for migratory species) and are therefore important for maximizing opportunities and heading off actions having only short-term benefits.

Lessons from sustainability efforts: development of leading indicators for adaptive management. ^*BERATAN, KATHI ^1,2 and MORAN, SHARON ², ¹ Nicholas School, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA² Center for Sustainable Communities, Temple University, Ambler, PA, USA

ABSTRACT- Management of complexly interlinked human and natural systems requires a flexible and adaptive approach. A fundamental requirement is indicators that can provide feedback on the effects of management decisions. Monitoring programs for adaptive management seek to detect developing problems early enough to permit adjustment of plans and actions. Unfortunately, because complex systems exhibit non-linear dynamics and thresholds, it is likely to be too late to act by the time changes in the condition of the resource being managed are detectable. Another factor that interferes with the feedback loop is the difference in timescale between the critical processes in the social-ecological system and those in the political-managerial system. The valued natural resources that are the focus of management actions generally experience change on timescales that are very long relative to political and organizational cycles. Leading indicators need to be defined based on change hypotheses ('if...then' statements describing potential actions and expected outcomes) that fully integrate environmental, social, and economic information. Social and economic pressures are the primary drivers of change in ecosystem conditions; thus, measures of human behaviors may provide advance notice of slower moving environmental changes. Relatively high levels of uncertainty will accompany interpretation of these metrics, in part because the change hypotheses may be incomplete or partially in error, and so indicators should be designed to test the validity of the change hypothesis. Review of sustainability indicator projects provides useful insights into development of change hypotheses and indicators that integrate environmental, social and economic factors.

KEY WORDS: sustainability, indicators, adaptive management, complexity, science policy