Title: 2.0 Introduction to the Delaware River Basin pilot study

Author: Murdoch, Peter S.; Jenkins, Jennifer C.; Birdsey, Richard A.

Year: 2008

Publication: In: Murdoch, Peter S.; Jenkins, Jennifer C.; Birdsey, Richard A. The Delaware River Basin Collaborative Environmental Monitoring and Research Initiative. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-25. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 16-23.

Abstract: The past 20 years of environmental research have shown that the environment is not made up of discrete components acting independently, but rather it is a mosaic of complex relationships among air, land, water, living resources, and human activities. The data collection and analytical capabilities of current ecosystem assessment and monitoring programs are insufficient to measure how multiple components of the ecosystem interact. Since the mid-1990s, resource managers have been called upon to adopt "ecosystem management" practices for land stewardship, but seldom have had the multicomponent, ecosystem-level information needed to achieve this goal. Much of the information currently being collected is fragmentary and incompatible because it is collected through programs designed and conducted at different scales or for different objectives, because data confidentiality issues can limit data sharing and field collaboration, and because protocols for sampling and data management are inconsistent. Similarly, much of the information currently collected cannot be used to answer regional ecosystem-level questions because the scale of process-based research is incompatible with the larger scales of typical monitoring and assessment. Science capabilities must be expanded to increase our capability for drawing connections between processes taking place at intensively studied research areas and trends in the resources typically monitored at larger scales (Gosz and Murdoch 1999).