ABSTRACT
Section I.5, Finding Indicators, contains six chapters that provide thought-provoking insight into the approaches and processes used to develop suites of indicators for establishing integrity of a particular ecosystem. Along the broad scale of ecosystem integrity, environmental managers as well as the public can typically differentiate highly degraded ecosystems from those that are more toward the pristine end of the scale. However, the assessment of an ecosystem that is undergoing a slow decline in its integrity (or the often misused word health) over many decades, or of one which has not been characterized in its previous, more intact state, offers challenges to scientists and environmental managers. A major goal of environmental management is not only to develop a suite of indicators of ecosystem integrity but also to synthesize these indicators into technically defensible assessments of environmental health. An important part of this goal is to develop indicators of integrity for specific floral and faunal populations within an ecosystem and the health of humans who exist within the ecosystem and utilize its resources. Existing monitoring approaches, such as population assessments, epidemiology, routine collections, toxicity testing, and chemical analyses can and should all be components of an integrated approach to environmental health assessment. However, these approaches are at present not adequate by themselves to definitively address ecosystem integrity; thus, additional research is needed to define measurement endpoints and the integration of those metrics into a conceptual framework that environmental managers can directly utilize for decision making.
