Monitoring strategies and scale-appropriate hydrologic and biogeochemical modelling for natural resource management: Conclusions and recommendations from a session held at the iEMSs 2008

This short communication paper presents recommendations for developing scale-appropriate monitoring and modelling strategies to assist decision making in natural resource management (NRM). These ideas presented here were discussed in the session (S5) 'Monitoring strategies and scale-appropriate hydrologic and biogeochemical modelling for natural resource management' session at the 2008 International Environmental Modelling and Simulation Society conference, Barcelona, Spain. The outcomes of the session and recent international studies exemplify the need for a stronger collaboration and communication between researcher and model developer on the one side, and natural resource managers and the model users on the other side to increase knowledge in: 1) the limitations and uncertainties of current monitoring and modelling strategies, 2) scale-dependent linkages between monitoring and modelling techniques, and 3) representation of hydrologic and biogeochemical phenomena in model development and practical application for natural resource management.