The challenges of integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services monitoring and evaluation at a landscape-scale wetland restoration project in the UK

There is an increasing emphasis on the restoration of ecosystem services as well as of biodiversity, especially where restoration projects are planned at a landscape scale. This increase in the diversity of restoration aims has a number of conceptual and practical implications for the way that restoration projects are monitored and evaluated. Landscape-scale projects require monitoring of not only ecosystem services and biodiversity but also of ecosystem processes since these can underpin both. Using the experiences gained at a landscape-scale wetland restoration project in the UK, we discuss a number of issues that need to be considered, including the choice of metrics for monitoring ecosystem services and the difficulties of assessing the interactions between ecosystem processes, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Particular challenges that we identify, using two pilot data sets, include the decoupling of monetary metrics used for monitoring ecosystem services from biophysical change on the ground and the wide range of factors external to a project that influence the monitoring results. We highlight the fact that the wide range of metrics necessary to evaluate the ecosystem service, ecosystem process, and biodiversity outcomes of landscape-scale projects presents a number of practical challenges, including the need for high levels of varied expertise, high costs, incommensurate monitoring outputs, and the need for careful management of monitoring results, especially where they may be used in making decisions about the relative importance of project aims.

A social-ecological impact assessment for public lands management: application of a conceptual and methodological framework

According to the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), federal action to manipulate habitat for species conservation requires an environmental impact statement, which should integrate natural, physical, economic, and social sciences in planning and decision making. Nonetheless, most impact assessments focus disproportionately on physical or ecological impacts rather than integrating ecological and socioeconomic components. We developed a participatory social-ecological impact assessment (SEIA) that addresses the requirements of NEPA and integrates social and ecological concepts for impact assessments. We cooperated with the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho, USA on a project designed to restore habitat for the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). We employed questionnaires, workshop dialogue, and participatory mapping exercises with stakeholders to identify potential environmental changes and subsequent impacts expected to result from the removal of western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis). Via questionnaires and workshop dialogue, stakeholders identified 46 environmental changes and associated positive or negative impacts to people and communities in Owyhee County, Idaho. Results of the participatory mapping exercises showed that the spatial distribution of social, economic, and ecological values throughout Owyhee County are highly associated with the two main watersheds, wilderness areas, and the historic town of Silver City. Altogether, the SEIA process revealed that perceptions of project scale varied among participants, highlighting the need for specificity about spatial and temporal scales. Overall, the SEIA generated substantial information concerning potential impacts associated with habitat treatments for Greater Sage-Grouse. The SEIA is transferable to other land management and conservation contexts because it supports holistic understanding and framing of connections between humans and ecosystems. By applying this SEIA framework, land managers and affected people have an opportunity to fulfill NEPA requirements and develop more comprehensive management plans that better reflect the linkages of social-ecological systems.