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.”

Human management of landscapes is a primary cause of global environmental change. In residential landscapes, homeowner yard management can affect ecological properties and processes locally and regionally. For example, turfgrass lawns are now one of the largest irrigated crops in the U.S., contributing to high water and fertilizer use. Social drivers, such as personal values or Homeowner Association (HOA) regulations, also impact individual yard management decisions.

Resilience has matured substantially as a system concept since Holling first applied the concept to ecological systems (Holling 1973). The literature has developed exponentially in the last quarter-century (Jansson et al.). It has been extended to apply to social systems (Westley et al. 2002) and to social-ecological systems. Finally it has been increasingly integrated into other literatures such as vulnerability analysis and sustainability science (e.g., Turner et al. 2003, Clark et al. 2003) and included in policy documents that address societal responses to climate change.

Despite the increased recognition of the importance of urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation on social-ecological systems, comparative research on cities across the United States is limited. Therefore, we developed a cross-site comparative study on the land spatial pattern across five LTER sites in the US Southwest. This poster examines the land pattern characteristics for an individual site - Central Arizona Phoenix (CAP).

This Working Group session is offered by the newly NSF-funded LTER Math-Science-Partnership (MSP) Pathways to Environmental Literacy project. Presentations by panelists at this session address topics at the intersection of science teaching and learning and the myriad issues of citizenship, equity, diversity, and place. The focus areas of the Pathways project are: Biodiversity, the Water Cycle, and the Carbon Cycle.

Land uses and management practices in residential parcels (e.g., aesthetic/recreational/economic uses, land-cover choices, irrigation and chemical applications) impact and are impacted by social (e.g., stratification and status, environmental perceptions, zoning) and ecological (e.g., carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, water demand and quality) processes.

Implementing the ILTER Science Agenda: Defining International and Regional Science Initiatives Since its 2003 annual meeting, the International Long Term Ecological Research network (ILTER) transformed itself from essentially an infrastructure-building project to a more diversified, stable organization with the ability to implement substantive scientific projects in collaboration with the US-LTER International Committee (see web link in working group materials).

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

Resource control in the western Pyrenees from 1800 to the present is addressed by reference to external factors: historical events; economic, technological and policy changes; and in the context of the “house system,” which functioned and continues to function as a control agent of environmental exploitation practices. The issue for the present is political, having to do with the conflict of legitimacy fed by the confusion that exists over the concept of the mountain: “free space” (high mountain zone) vs.

This working group is a continuation of the previous day's meeting, here to plan the future course of actions.