Sustainable Development and Ecosystem-Based Land Management

To varying degrees, work completed for most of our projects includes application of the principles of ecosystem-based management and sustainable development.

Depending on the project, this can involve developing the project-specific application of these principles to meet regulatory requirements, designing and guiding the implementation of practices that strive to maintain ecosystem health, or developing and applying regional criteria and indicators for evaluating success.

We have also provided advice on applying ecosystem-based management and sustainable development principles to companies, provincial government ministries and agencies, and land use planning processes.

Examples of areas of expertise:

Principles and application of ecosystem-based management and ecologically sustainable development.
Principles and application of conservation biology.

Example Projects

Global Ecological Integrity Project

This was a collaborative project sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). The objectives of this project included: conceptual and theoretical analysis of ecological integrity and sustainable development; improve upon attempts to provide operational and quantifiable criteria and measures of integrity; develop prescriptions for protecting, maintaining or enhancing integrity and sustainability; identify multi-scale indicators of ecological integrity for selected forest areas in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.

As a collaborator in this project, one of ECOSTEM’s principals developed and demonstrated the practical implementation of the project objectives for the forest regions of Manitoba. He also co-authored a peer-reviewed book chapter.

Manitoba Ecosystem Based Management Pilot Project

The overall goal of this Government of Manitoba project was to demonstrate the application of ecosystem-based management at the ecoregion level through an approach that addresses ecosystem functional relationships and public values (economic, social and cultural).

As a member of the Science Team for this project, we provided written contributions and advice regarding vegetation dynamics and terrestrial ecology at the site, landscape, ecodistrict and ecoregion scales.

Some of the tasks we completed included:

Create a land cover map for eastern Manitoba (approximately 71,000 km²) using a combination of data sources
Create representative toposequences
Create representative successional pathways for the common ecosite types
Provide written descriptions of terrestrial ecosystems and processes
Provide advice on how to integrate the ecological information contributed by various specialists

Keeping Forests Healthy While Harvesting Timber

Completed for the Manitoba Model Forest, Pine Falls Paper Co. and Tembec Ltd.

This was a large, multi-faceted project that developed a practical response to the question: “How do we keep forests healthy while harvesting timber?” (some call this “emulating natural disturbance”).

For this project, we used the principles of ecosystem-based management and sustainable development to design stand and landscape level timber harvest guidelines that generate post-logging ecosystem dynamics that maintain ecosystem health. These guidelines were reviewed by other scientists and practitioners working in this field.

Learn about our other roles in this project.