PBS&J Highlights Focus

Over the past 50 years, we have learned hard social, political, and economical lessons about the effects of human activities on Earth’s life support systems.

Today, even school-age children recognize the importance of being good stewards of our planet. Understanding how ecosystems operate and support diverse groups of organisms is no longer considered a matter of concern only to scientists.

Our cover story, Evolution of the Land Ethic, provides a broad-brush picture of the concept called “ecosystem management and restoration.” The Quest for Clean Water looks at one of the most critical aspects of this: getting the water right. Gaining Ground in the Bayou reports on the ambitious and important Louisiana Coastal Area Restoration Project.

It has been our pleasure to discuss the topic of ecosystem restoration with the extraordinary Storm Cunningham, author of the thought- provoking book, The Restoration Economy, and executive director of the Revitalization Institute. Cunningham provides an enlightening economic perspective in our Expert’s View column.

All water managers will want to read GTSM: Channeling the Flow of Water Information. Here we introduce a new Geospatial Time Series Management solution that we are using to translate streams of raw water-related data into a single, GIS-driven resource.

Technically challenging, politically charged, and with the potential to span decades—this is an apt description for the job of Managing Large-Scale Restorations. In our article, PBS&J Associate Vice President Chuck Padera shares some valuable advice learned through his on-the-job experiences.

Putting together each issue of PBS&J Highlights always uncovers more information than we have room to share in our hard-copy publication. For those of you who would like to read more about ecosystem management and restoration, we encourage you to go online to www.pbsj.com/highlights. Here you will see this issue in electronic form and can click on related articles for expanded coverage of our topics. Let us know what you think!