Indicators of What for What?

摘要

Research has a variety of motives including intellectual curiosity, advancing one's career,and obtaining ongoing funding. However, anyone who chooses an environmental scienceas a career also has the intention of making the world a better place. The primary means ofusing research to improve and protect the environment are to provide information that isuseful in the environmental assessments that inform environmental managementdecisions. However, most environmental researchers have little experience with environ-mental assessment and, therefore, little feel for the needs of assessors. Consequently, theresults of indicator monitoring have not, in general, been useful to environmental asses-sors, particularly ecological risk assessors (Suter, 2001). It may be helpful to explain thevarious sorts of environmental assessments and their relations to decision making by envi-ronmental managers.