ABSTRACT
Introduction Ecosystem-scale management is increasingly being initiated around the world to cope with complex problems spanning diverse environmental attributes over large areas. Methods to assess ecosystem management impacts and benets are slowly developing through practice. Some notable US examples of ecosystem management are the landscape habitat modeling used for restoration of the Florida’s Everglades [1], [2]; the indicator set used to track Chesapeake Bay management progress [3]; a key environmental tradeos comparison among scenarios for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California [4]; and long-term empirical monitoring of the Mississippi River [5]. In these and others cases, managed changes are expected to have numerous and widespread eects across many attributes of an ecosystem. Methods for anticipating and predicting magnitudes of change are needed to assess management options and identify a preferred alternative. Governments and decision-makers need concise and comparative information on their policy options, and the ecological science community should provide methods for forecasting ecosystem change [6], [7].
