Building on Lessons Learned from Landscape-Level Integrated Assessment to Inform Key Elements in ILM

Abstract

Integrated landscape management (ILM) is gaining increasing attention among Canadian practitioners for its capabilities to address environmental, social and economic goals simultaneously, while promoting sustainable development. ILM is relatively new in the family of integrated assessment (IA) approaches. This paper focuses on the lessons learned from the longer history of IA and its spatially explicit applications to inform current applications of ILM in Canada. We specifically focus on the role of spatially explicit information in addressing critical issues already flagged by ILM practitioners. In particular, we focus on challenges in defining roles and benefits of participation, linking environmental and social issues in integrated models and, testing and presenting uncertainties in the integrated models. We illustrate how some of these challenges were addressed using case studies from Canada, the United States and Europe. The experiences from these studies show that using GIS and other geospatial information tools can be effectively integrated into IA to enhance the relevance of IA for decision-making and to assist with participatory engagement activities by introducing new ways to explore and present choices and options to practitioners. The use of geospatial tools also enable integrated modelling to occur at spatially disaggregated levels, which increases the context under which external influences may be considered. Despite these benefits, current applications of these tools tend to be limited to technical representation of system conditions and the visualization of biophysical processes. A deficiency of socio-economic indicators and change information, including policy and management actions and impacts, means that outcomes from these tools currently have limited relevance for policy-makers.