Biocomplexity Incubation Activity: Integrating Social Science Into Long-Term Ecological Research

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The rapid growth in understandings of the complex ways that human and natural systems interact in a broad range of environments have led to intensified calls for greater collaboration among social and natural scientists in the study of long-term environmental change. Major differences in theoretical perspectives, vocabulary, organizational structure, and scientific culture have inhibited these collaborations, but increasing numbers of researchers in both the human and natural sciences now are looking to bridge the gaps that previously separated them. This Biocomplexity Incubation Activity award will provide support to enable the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project in collaboration with the Baltimore Ecosystems Study (BES LTER) to hold a series of workshops to promote the integration of social sciences into long-term ecological research. The project's primary objective will be to spark scientifically exciting interdisciplinary research that brings together social, biological, and physical scientists to better understand human ecosystems. The project is based on a previous workshop where social and biophysical scientists reached a consensus on a broad conceptual framework for investigating human ecosystems and proposed a set of social patterns and processes key to their study. Because a unified understanding of human ecosystems needs to be taken in incremental steps, four research projects will be identified where investigators agree that bringing together social, biological, and physical scientists would lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms that govern ecosystem dynamics. An initial workshop focusing on the practical issues will help the four research projects implement integrated research. A second workshop will focus in depth on the proposed social patterns and processes and suggest ways these core topics can be implemented in the pilot projects. A final workshop will develop specific ways the proposed projects can accommodate the multiple spatial and temporal scales of the human ecosystem. This project will facilitate the development and dissemination of strategies for integration. The focus on four pilot projects will enable pragmatic solutions to emerge, with these solutions providing insights that will facilitate planning for enhanced involvement of social scientists by additional LTER sites. This sustained effort will foster progressive steps toward the integration of the social sciences into long-term ecological research and development of a unified understanding of human ecosystems, one of the most urgent challenges to understanding biocomplexity and the environment.