Information and Knowledge Management in Support of Sustainable Forestry: a Review

For individuals, organizations and nations, success and even survival depend upon making good decisions. Doing so can be extremely difficult when problems are not well structured and situations are complex, as they are for natural resource management. Recent advances in computer technology coupled with the increase in accessibility brought about by the Internet have increased our ability to solve complex problems in natural resources. Scientific disciplines that have evolved to exploit this new computer-based technology include knowledge management and decision science. Impressive computer-based systems have been developed, but their use in natural resource management has been limited. Widespread adoption will require close cooperation among people working in research as well as management, across disciplines, up and down the administrative structure in state and federal agencies and in the private sector. The objectives of this chapter are: (i) to briefly review the history and recent advances in natural resource information and knowledge management, including decision-support systems and multiple-criteria decision making; (ii) to discuss some of the interrelationships among inventory and monitoring, statistics and modelling, information and knowledge management and policy science; and (iii) to offer some ideas on how to best support sustainability as a forest management paradigm, given the new capabilities afforded by progress in information and knowledge management. Knowledge Management