Comments on: Panel 4: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management

By: liebhold

liebhold — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:41:49 +0000

NCEAS is responsible for impressive advancements in the field of conservation ecology. There is however a sort of “ying/yang” between conservation ecology and invasion ecology. Given that us invasion biologists are invariably “catching-up” with many of the important concepts “discovered” by conservation biologists (e.g., the importance of Allee effects to population persistance) there perhaps remains room for NCEAS to make important contributions advancing the field of invasion biology. While work at NCEAS has advanced that field, I think there is potential here for considerable more synthetic, integrative work on invasion ecology.

By: lortie

lortie — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:41:56 +0000

How can we synthesize the observations that conservation biologist have of change in nature? Not just the data.

By: lortie

lortie — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:07:39 +0000

In reply to lortie. The open-source component could be that once the specific initiative is funded any ecologist (or citizen) can add to the online database accumulating to support the project. The low-cost, shifting, set of expert working groups bring their own but also work with what others post.

By: lortie

lortie — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:05:18 +0000

NCEAS as a mediator/facilitator of open-source synthesis.
What if NCEAS flipped the proposal pipeline and solicited proposals from NGOs, companies, governments, etc.? NCEAS could leverage its credibility, technical expertise, and connections to ecologists. Once a proposal is submitted from an organization, ‘we need diversity data near pipelines, public parks, etc,’ NCEAS then advertises to ecologists and picks the best folks to synthesize, compile, and analyze the data. Proposals could even go both ways. Sets of conservation biologist could post an ad on NCEAS indicating that collectively they have datasets that speak to diversity distributed broadly and that they need support to get together to compile the data. Funders have full access to the data, as is done anyway, and it is a third party, objective group of individuals (ecologists) that do the work. Data for sale. Free. Time. Not free. Funders pay for the facilitator think tank NCEAS 2.0 to bring datasets that answer questions, use-inspired (and funded) synthesis.