Long-Term Monitoring Program, Fort Benning, GA: Ecosystem Characterization and Monitoring Initiative, Version 2.1

摘要

Department of Defense (DOD) policy has established ecosystem management as its approach to management of military lands. The DOD goal for adopting an ecosystem approach to land management is to maintain and improve the sustainability of military lands while supporting the DOD mission. The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) has developed the Ecosystem Characterization and Monitoring initiative (ECMI) to support this goal via the design, development, and demonstration of the characterization and monitoring concept for military installations. The ECMI products must support multiple research goals and be beneficial to installation land managers. The objective of ECMI was to develop a framework to characterize the long-term spatial and temporal dynamics of key ecosystem properties and processes in a way that is jointly beneficial to research needs and military land management operations. The ECMI is currently providing baseline ecological information to support (1) ecological research on Fort Benning, GA, (2) baseline level data to Fort Benning's integrated monitoring plan, (3) a long-term ecological data set that over time will allow the assessment of the relationships between land use, land management, and ecosystem sustainability, and (4) monitoring data sets collected by other agencies in the region.