Relevance of scale dependent approaches for integrating biophysical and socio-economic information and development of agroecological indicators

Issues of environmental sustainability, limits to growth and opportunity, introduction of new technology, and the economic and social costs of resource degradation have forced more proactive integration of biophysical and socio-economic data. Natural resources management, including soil, water and land quality, involve balancing the often conflicting objectives of food and fibre production under scenarios of increasing demand, while increasing economic efficiency and maintaining the quality of the environment. It involves integration of data from several disparate disciplines, scaling the data to make them compatible on input, identifying strategic indicators, criteria and thresholds with which to assess the state and performance of the system, and the application of biophysical and economic optimisation models to examine the impacts and trade-offs of alternate management options. However, some basic questions of scales and hierarchies still have to be resolved, e.g. how to "scale-up" the biophysical data to the level at which public policy is formulated without losing the integrity of the data. This paper examines these and related issues by discussing the theories and principles of spatial and temporal hierarchies and scales, and providing some examples of application.