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Adaptive management plans rooted in quantitative ecological predictions of ecosystem processes: putting monitoring data to practical use

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2021

Christian Damgaard Open the ORCID record for Christian Damgaard [Opens in a new window]
Christian Damgaard*
Affiliation:
Bioscience, Aarhus University, Vejlsøvej 25, 8600 Silkeborg, Denmark
*
Corresponding author: Professor Christian Damgaard, Email: [email protected]
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Summary

The adoption of adaptive management plans has been advocated in order to ensure the most effective management of natural habitats. Here, it is demonstrated how a hierarchical structural equation model that is fitted to temporal ecological monitoring data from a number of sites may be used to generate quantitative local ecological predictions and how these predictions may form the basis of adaptive management plans. Local ecological predictions will be made for the cover of the dwarf shrub cross-leaved heath (Erica tetralix) on Danish wet heathlands, which is an indicator of the conservation status of wet heathlands under different management scenarios. Based on a realistic example, the model predictions conclude that grazing by livestock on wet heathlands with a relatively low cover of cross-leaved heath cannot be recommended as the only management practice. Generally, ecological monitoring data may be used to generate quantitative and credible local adaptive management plans where uncertainty is taken into account.

Keywords

adaptive management plansbiodiversitychanging environmentconservation plansErica tetralixhierarchical structural equation modelwet heathlands
Type
Research Paper
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 27 - 32
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Foundation for Environmental Conservation

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