The management of the Pacific sardine is currently based on an environmental parameter, the surface temperature measured at the Scripps Pier. In the past sardine recruitment and Pier temperature were related. However, once current data on recruitment are included in the analysis no significant relationship between Pier temperature and recruitment are evident. We observed that Pier temperature and temperature in the primary sardine habitat have diverged over the last decades. Thus we explored relationships between temperature in the Southern California Bight and sardine recruitment.

Human alterations of the earth's surface are widely recognized as one of the planet's most significant cumulative global environmental changes. Increasing population and per capita income suggest that this trend will continue in coming decades. In countries such as the US this process manifests principally as suburbanization.

Malawi is a land of farmers and facing rampant environmental problems whose capability for restoration is made dimmer by the looming shadow of climate change and variability. The Malawi Environmental Observatory Network is a small candle flickering with light for identification of prioritized environmental problems and setting of the road map of how such monumental problems could efficiently be tackled with the available meager resources.

Cities are specific environments for testing paradigms related to water, biodiversity and resource management. Permanent interaction of a number of factors: anthropogenic, natural, social and economic, imposing pressures on environment and raising quality expectations, makes development and effective implementation of new theories and foundings a real challenge. Another challenge is general lack of paradigm linking water management and biodiversity management in urban areas.

As demonstrated in many studies, mostly in rural settings, successful resource management requires collaboration among many groups. This is likely to be even more pronounced in densely settled urban areas. Cities generally consist of many fragmented land parcels under different types of use and ownership, which produces a large and diverse group of stakeholders with an interest in resource management decisions.

The Chicago Region ULTRA-Ex will address a question fundamental to understanding the dynamic interactions between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem processes, and human well being in urban landscapes: In a complex urban/metropolitan system, what are the synergies and tradeoffs between conserving biodiversity and providing ecosystem services to people? The project focuses on the Green Infrastructure Vision of the Chicago Wilderness alliance, a conservation consortium of over 240 organizations.

The Integrative Science for Society and Environment (ISSE) initiative and its working model for the interaction of ecosystems and social systems represent the product of tremendous investment by the LTER network and its scientists as part of the 20-year planning process. Researchers in the emerging field of sustainability science promote similar frameworks that fundamentally integrate economy, ecology, and equity.

In the last fifty years, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), driven by rapid social and economic changes, world population dramatically affected long-term stability of natural ecosystems and its capacity to provide vital services such as food, water and climate regulation.

During the LTER-ZA meeting in Baltimore in October 2008, it appeared that US and French research teams involved in the study of urban and periurban aquatic systems were not measuring the same parameters in their field studies. Any cooperation between our research teams will be difficult as long as methods and monitoring approaches are different or at least their differences are well understood on both sides.

This session is intended both for social and biophysical scientists who want to help develop a proposal for the kind of “multi-site, highly collaborative and integrated research initiative” envisioned by the LTER planning group. The focus will be on what the LTER planning process calls the “centerpiece” of the group's conceptual framework, as well as one of “Grand Challenges” to be addressed at the network level – “the dynamics of coupled human-natural ecosystems.”