The 21st centur y is an era of global ecological conservation, and all national parks need a strategic plan for their management to meet the demand of the century. A strategic plan is the effective method for directing an organization to face new challenge and program for the future. The plan must contain specified vision, mission and well-defined goals, and so it is a longer (usually 10-year) term management plan that also includes a shorter (e.g. 5-year) operations plan.
　
The principles of the adaptive management or ecosystem management stress that the outcome of the past methods of management is an important referential basis for further improvement. The indicators of the outcome need to be quantified and tested for statistical significance. Based on these principles, the quantified data come from scientific exper iments. All operations plan must comprise cer tain items and procedures (e.g. experimentation, monitoring, recording, archiving, analyzing, and interpretation), and in the end be applied to the establishment of a policy.

As in the case of constructing a trail, all aspects from its purpose to the way of its design and implement, the assessment of potential impact on landscape and its carrying capacity must have treatment and controlled groups for comparison, also its impact on the environment must be obtained from the monitoring data to provide statistical significance of various treatments. From the results and conclusion we can better evaluate the correctness and comprehensiveness of the predicted environmental impact assessment as well as the deviation and difference.

In addition to the operation concept adopting scientific experiments, emerging monitoring technologies must also be used in order to obtain information that is longer in time and broader in space.   We can obtain more data (at night, in foul weather, from remote places or 24 hours daily in a whole year) necessary for operation only by breaking the limit of traditional monitory methods (e.g. collect data during daytime, in good weather, from readily accessible areas, with available time) .

These data rely on more advanced equipment (e.g. automatic recording devices and wireless monitoring networking, and other cyber-infrastructures) to go beyond the limit of time, space, facility, and labor.


Handling the collected data is another challenge. The traditionalwayofdatastorage(e.g.savedinapersonaldatabase) may suffer from data entropy because it is prone to getting lost or unable to be reused and difficult to be effectively shared by others, hence seriously cut down the data’s life and values. Therefore, sound information management system is the basis of the efficient use of data. The data have to go through quality control and assurance and stored under standardized protocols to achieve enduring archiving with functions of flowing, sharing, comparison,integration,andsynthesizing.
　
The information needed by the managers has to be provided by multidisciplinary research teams. It is only through integrating various data as well as the cyber-infrastructures of monitoring and internet that we can have a comprehensive understanding about the ecological phenomena and processes and then translate the data into documents readily applicable to management. One important usage of the data is to predict the trend of environment and ecological changes in the national parks, to decide if it is the impact caused by the disturbances due to human activities or natural forces, or by both. This knowledge is the scientific information to improve management, the basis for planning management strategy and the foundation of making the management policy.
　
It is only through executing the management strategic plan, following the code of adaptive management, adopting emerging monitoring technologies and information management system that we can manage the national parks in a more reasonable way toward the path to sustainable resources.

Hen-biau King
Ph.D. Earth Science of  Carleton University, Canada
Director-General of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, and the Chair of International Long Term Ecological Research Network

• Image: National park