Advances in Ecosystem and Water Resources Science and Management to Inform Coastal Zone Planning and Decision Making

The complexity of rapid environmental changes, cross-jurisdictional natural resource users, and management authorities has placed a greater importance on integrating science and management at landscape and ecosystem scales. Understanding the relationships that drive landscape-scale processes, their response to multiple stressors and change, and the prudent management of human activities in these systems, is challenging. Abrupt changes, tipping points, and clustering of extreme events complicate the management and maintenance of environmental resources to be sustainable and resilient. This objective is even more challenging in systems controlled by different drivers on multiple timescales, cross natural or political boundaries, and include diverse demands for their services and management authorities and approaches. These challenges also provide opportunities for scientists, managers, and users to identify common principles and strategies that can reduce conflict, and achieve economies of scale and equitable outcomes. The research presented here will describe strategies and future challenges for managing system sustainability and reducing vulnerability to extreme events and rapid change. Key elements of effective ecosystem and watershed management include: flexible approaches that adapt to demographic pressures and environmental change; innovative uses of observations and predictive capabilities; developing environmental, social, and economic indicators that integrate across time scales and geography; sharing and leveraging monitoring, knowledge, management processes, and outreach; facilitating the flow of timely, acceptable, and reliable risk and trade-off information to decision makers; and the support of collaborative science, management, and governance frameworks. Using examples from the management of watershed, coastal, and ocean systems as independent and interconnected systems, we illustrate how strategies and insights can be applied to advise integrated planning and management of coastal resources and ecosystems.