ILTER Synthesis Workshop: Interactions among ecosystem services, ecosystem dynamics, and human outcomes and behavior

The ecosystem services (ES) initiative is the first network?level attempt by the International Long Term Ecological Research network (ILTER) to address the linkages between ES and human outcomes and behavior, and how they influence each other in biomes. The work is conducted by developing site?specific feedback models for a selected site representing a biome for each member network. The feedback model framework was developed in 2007 under the US?LTER strategic research initiative "Integrative Science for Society and the Environment" (ISSE) and by several workshops on land use and ES.

The ES initiative (see working group materials), entitled “Interactions among ecosystem services, ecosystem dynamics, and human outcomes and behavior”, was developed after the 2007 ILTER annual meeting . The work was designed to be conducted in four discrete steps:

1. Implementation of the ISSE framework for each study site;
2. Identification of the six critical ES, directions of change, primary drivers of change, public awareness of the ES, and institution(s) that manage the ES;
3. Identification of threshold interactions between environmental and socio-economic dynamics at multiple scales, and forecasting the effects of these interactions on ecosystem services and ecological resilience;
4. Synthesis within and among biomes of culture-specific socio-economic dynamics leading to increases or decreases in resilience.

Steps 1 and 2 were completed by August 2008 for the ILTER Annual Meeting held in Stara Lesna, Slovakia. An ES initiative workshop was organized during this annual meeting and is linked in the working group materials.  Work has continued since the Slovakia meeting. To date, 19 member networks have participated actively in the first three steps of the initiative, providing a representative array of sites. The synthesis workshop (step 4) will be held 2 days prior to the 2009 ASM meeting. Scientists from each contributing network will meet to consolidate and integrate results from the individual sites. A manuscript is expected from this exercise.

Although the workshop is targeted at representatives from the contributing networks, other scientists may attend the workshop as observers based on their interests and skills, and space availability. Please contact the workshop organizer Patrick Bourgeron at psbourgeron@plymouth.edu .