Restoration Coffee House Session Three: Measuring Outcomes
Friday, April 27,
8:30am-10:00am
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This Restoration Coffee
House (RCH) session follows from the two earlier sessions by closing
the loop in managing ecosystem restoration by assessing results and
using outcomes to guide and improve restoration efforts. Rigorous
measurement of outcomes is essential to adaptive management and to
testing and refining the models that underpin defining success and
setting priorities. Yet, monitoring and other measuring programs are
often not appropriately designed for assessing success or comparing
priority actions, are inadequately supported or sustained, or do not
produce results useful to managers on a timely basis. Consequently,
after years of implementation some large-scale ecosystem restoration
programs have been criticized as unaccountable. This may cause
public and political support to wane. This RCH session will explore
the state of practice in measuring outcomes in several major
ecosystem restoration programs, bringing out “the good, the bad and
the ugly” and identifying steps that can substantially improve the
measurement of outcomes. The panel and audience will be initially
challenged to address the following questions.
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How effective have
the monitoring and assessment activities been in assessing
progress and informing decision-makers and the public regarding
the choices to be made in major ecosystem restoration programs?
For new restoration programs, have lessons been applied from
other regions in the design of monitoring and assessment?
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What are the major
constraints (e.g., financial support, technical limitations,
lack of agreement on metrics, analysis and reporting, etc.) in
designing and implementing an effective outcome measurement
system?
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Does the ecosystem
restoration program yet have effective outcome metrics in the
form of a manageable set of scientifically sound indicators that
can be consistently applied and serve the needs of
decision-makers? How might they be improved?
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To what degree are
measured outcomes being used in adaptive management of the
ecosystem restoration, i.e. by providing interpretable and
timely information to decision-makers that allows them to track
progress towards measures of success, refine those measures, and
set priorities among actions to achieve them?
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