Ecosystem Management and the Florida Everglades: The Role of Social Scientists

Recently many state and federal agencies in the U.S. have embraced an ecosystems management approach to environmental protection and regulation. This approach requires a high degree of cooperation between natural and social scientists to translate policy objectives into research hypotheses, models, and evaluation procedures to guide implementation decisions. An adaptive procedure to guide interdisciplinary research is described and illustrated with highlights of recent progress and pitfalls from the restoration initiative for the Everglades/South Florida ecosystem.