Abstract:

The increasingly ecological and environmental problems indicate that ecological science currently plays only marginal roles in the decisionmaking of sustainable development in China.This article systematically analyzes the reasons that may decrease the effect of ecological knowledge on policy,and finds that the most important reason is the improper form of the ecological knowledge ecologists provided to decisionmakers.As a kind of measurable characteristics related to the structure,composition,or function of ecosystem,ecological indicator is one of the effective forms for transferring ecological knowledge to the public and policy makers.Ecological indicator translates the complicated ecological knowledge to the public and policy makers in an easy understanding way,which make the informed decisions with ecological knowledge possible.Actually,the ecological indicator that developed by ecologists together with policy makers and decision makers would be the bridge between ecological science and policy.Furthermore,this kind of ecological indicator is very helpful to narrow the gap between ecologists and policy makers,and to facilitate developing the ecological policies with sound ecolgoical science.In order to make the ecological science serve the policy more effectively,ecological indicators should be integrated with wellknown socialeconomic indicators.For decision makers,those ecological indicators will be more useful