The governance assessment framework for landscape-level ecosystem-based management is a flexible tool comprised of a set of questions to guide mixed-methods research, and a set of steps for feeding both that research and other types of knowledge into stakeholder deliberation and planning. The findings from an assessment will include a summary of key issues for the landscape ecosystem, of various stakeholders’ values and interests that pertain to those issues, and of the structures and processes of governance that mediate diverse values and interests, affect social learning and collaboration, and shape decisions on the issues. The assessment framework includes the following five conceptual tasks: description of the broader social-ecological system, description of governance processes, assessment of governance processes, assessment of governance capacities, and assessment of governance outcomes. Those tasks are broken down into 8 questions and 16 indicators.
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