One of the critical issues of our time is the dwindling capacity of the planet to provide life support for a large and growing human population. Based on a symposium on ecosystem health, Managing for Healthy Ecosystems identifies key issues that must be resolved if there is to be progress in this complex area, such as:

Evolving methods for regional ecosystem health assessment employing complex adaptive systems coupled with adaptive technologies to permit accurate determination of changes in regional and global environments

Issues and methods for assessing, monitoring, and...

Transdisciplinarity provides an essential context for understanding some of the most important, complex, and difficult issues we face, whether in environmental protection, maintaining our health care systems, drafting new laws, formulating public policy, accommodating religious and cultural pluralism, or dealing humanely and respectfully with an ageing population. It responds to the need to cross boundaries in order to embrace the ideas of all disciplines that may be relevant to these questions. Successful transdisciplinary endeavours depend on developing methodologies that can be used to...

Ecosystem health offers a fresh perspective on the management of natural resources and the environment. While some of the root concepts can surely be traced back to Aldo Leopold and even earlier, it is only in the recent decade that a substantial body of work has emerged on this topic. There is no question that a novel approach which is by its nature cross disciplinary, bridging the health and biological sciences, will initially raise a number of questions particularly pertaining to the use of metaphors and the validity of the analogy. This volume however goes beyond merely the philosophical...