Ecosystem management has gained widespread visibility as an approach to the management of land to achieve sustainable natural resource use. Despite widespread interest in this emerging management paradigm, Ecosystems is the first book to directly propose approaches for implementing ecosystem management, give examples of viable tools, and discuss the potential implications of implementing an ecosystem approach.

These ideas are framed in a historical context which examines the disjunction among ecological theory, environmental legislation, and natural resource management. The book includes several case studies that examine the role of ecosystem management in well-known examples such as the Adirondacks and the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. The authors emphasize that human values play a large role in making natural resource management decisions and suggest that ecosystem management be used as a tool which highlights the ecological consequences of these decisions.

The book explores the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functional attributes, with the goal of understanding potential conflicts between managing for biodiversity and managing ecosystems. It concludes with innovative approaches that can be developed and incorporated into any framework for ecosystem management.

Ecosystems: Balancing Science with Management will be of interest to natural resource managers responsible for developing management systems to sustain terrestrial ecosystems, to graduate students studying ecosystems, and to scientists interested in developing better tools for understanding the factors controlling ecosystem structure and function as well as assessing the risk of damage to ecological systems from perturbation.