4
Large-Scale Regional Assessments:
Lessons Learned from the Southern
Appalachian Assessment
David N. Wear
70
4.1 Introduction
In the fall of 1994, the Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA) was
chartered to address a broad complement of issues regarding the uses and
roles of public land and resources in the southern Appalachian Highlands.
The overall objective of the assessment was to
facilitate ecosystem management by providing comprehensive, interagency, ecological, social, and economic data as a foundation for natural resource management
[Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere Cooperative (SAMAB) 1996a].
In pursuit of this objective, the SAA sought to compile a compendium
of background information to define ecosystem conditions and to pursue
ecosystem management on public lands. The SAA compiled information at
the landscape scale, addressing all lands within the region. In many ways
it plowed new ground in the conduct of regional interdisciplinary analysis
and in the use of collaborative methods to address controversial resource
management issues. This paper examines the processes and outcomes of the
SAA, with an eye toward identifying lessons that can be transported to
other public ecosystem management efforts.
The SAA can be viewed as a mechanism for applying scientific knowledge to the full complement of ecosystem management issues in a specific
place. It therefore provides one model of organization in a broad spectrum
of potential science–management collaborations. Topics addressed by the
SAA were very wide in scope and were pursued in a descriptive fashion.
The foci of the SAA were on compiling information to define the status
of a regional-scale system and making information available for the
subsequent analysis of specific management issues. It was not focused
on solving specific management problems or supporting specific decisions.
Rather, its intent was to frame the perspectives of resource stewards and
to enhance the quality of information available to managers.
The SAA was not strictly a modeling exercise but was a mechanism
for compiling information through databases, models, and individuals’
Large-Scale Regional Assessments:
Lessons Learned from the Southern
Appalachian Assessment
David N. Wear
70
4.1 Introduction
In the fall of 1994, the Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA) was
chartered to address a broad complement of issues regarding the uses and
roles of public land and resources in the southern Appalachian Highlands.
The overall objective of the assessment was to
facilitate ecosystem management by providing comprehensive, interagency, ecological, social, and economic data as a foundation for natural resource management
[Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere Cooperative (SAMAB) 1996a].
In pursuit of this objective, the SAA sought to compile a compendium
of background information to define ecosystem conditions and to pursue
ecosystem management on public lands. The SAA compiled information at
the landscape scale, addressing all lands within the region. In many ways
it plowed new ground in the conduct of regional interdisciplinary analysis
and in the use of collaborative methods to address controversial resource
management issues. This paper examines the processes and outcomes of the
SAA, with an eye toward identifying lessons that can be transported to
other public ecosystem management efforts.
The SAA can be viewed as a mechanism for applying scientific knowledge to the full complement of ecosystem management issues in a specific
place. It therefore provides one model of organization in a broad spectrum
of potential science–management collaborations. Topics addressed by the
SAA were very wide in scope and were pursued in a descriptive fashion.
The foci of the SAA were on compiling information to define the status
of a regional-scale system and making information available for the
subsequent analysis of specific management issues. It was not focused
on solving specific management problems or supporting specific decisions.
Rather, its intent was to frame the perspectives of resource stewards and
to enhance the quality of information available to managers.
The SAA was not strictly a modeling exercise but was a mechanism
for compiling information through databases, models, and individuals’