Considering scale and EBM in Aotearoa New Zealand

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a dynamic process, focused on understanding and managing ecosystems across a range of organisational, spatial and temporal scales. Despite the importance of scale, only rarely is scale-dependency in different disciplines and the interactions between them explicitly stated and bought into play as affecting both the decision-making process and its success. Questions of scale also influence components that may have to change if jurisdictional boundaries or management resolutions are changed. Sustainable Seas research has produced new knowledge to better understand and communicate scale-dependencies for EBM. The knowledge from these research ideas have been brought together into a visualization to facilitate the development of decision-making practices that explicitly identify scale and scale-dependencies to increase the success of EBM decision-making processes.

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