This article discusses the growth of natural resource management projects and the subsequent need for socioeconomic assessments relating to natural resource management. The authors recognize that progress has been made toward developing appropriate methods to assess socioeconomic conditions at the community level and integrating those data into regional analyses. However, robust theoretical constructs linking socioeconomic conditions to changes in management policies are still lacking. Additionally, inadequate funding and the lack of long-term commitment on the part of natural resource agencies remain key obstacles to integrating socioeconomic assessments into adaptive management efforts. Listed below are the lessons learned from five large-scale socioeconomic assessments associated with ecosystem management projects in the western United States.

• “Lesson 1: Theoretical constructs exist for determining what socioeconomic variables to describe and analyze, but disagreements over those constructs continue, and linking socioeconomic conditions to resource management policies remains challenging.” (page 722)
• “Lesson 2: Community-scale analysis is essential and feasible, but challenging to design, implement, and integrate into other levels of analysis.” (page 722)
• “Lesson 3: Active engagement of community members, policymakers, land managers, and other relevant stakeholders in large-scale socioeconomic assessments over the short and long term is crucial.” (page 723)
• “Lesson 4: Time and budget allocations for large-scale socioeconomic assessments need to better accord with the actual costs and time required to collect and analyze diverse sets of socioeconomic data at multiple scales over large areas.” (page 725)