Editorial.

This issue of Environments consists of five papers on the diverse topics of water management in Ontario, community sustainability after mine closure, a backcountry national park monitoring program, traditional ecological knowledge in parks management, and cultural landscapes and landscape planning in Yemen. The papers differ in their focus, their area of concern, and in numerous more detailed ways. Yet they all exhibit common qualities, for example, in their dealing with cross disciplinary issues, with some stress on the human dimensions. Two relationships among the papers are worth highlighting. The first is a general concern for community which is expressed in: Ontario community involvement in water management; maintaining a northern Ontario community after resource decline and failure; implementing effective monitoring through the wardens and professionals or community at Riding Mountain National Park; recognizing and using traditional or community knowledge in Canadian parks management; and, describing and analyzing the historic and current role of communities in shaping the landscape of Yemen.

The second quality of interest among all the papers is ways of gaining the information needed to understand and deal with the issue or topic at hand. In this sense the papers seem to reflect two basic approaches: the empirical social scientific methodology of the two papers on backcountry monitoring and mine closure and the reflective or scholarly methodology of the three papers on watershed management, traditional ecological knowledge and cultural landscapes in Yemen. The last paper is greatly enriched by the underlying extensive and intensive field observations and photography.

We at Environments profited from and enjoyed all five of these papers and strongly commend them to you.

J. Gordon Nelson, Editor-in-Chief

June 2004