Tools and Knowledge Base Presently Available to Do Ecosystem Management and to Assess Its Success

Managers and researchers are currently defining and setting objectives for ecosystem management; however, it is not clear what ecological information is needed as a basis for setting specific management goals and priorities, or to implement ecosystem-based management in the field. The focus of this chapter is to describe how and what type of data have been collected in the past to assess ecosystems. The objective of this section is to identify what tools and bodies of knowledge are currently available to guide the planning and implementation of ecosystem-based management.