Panel 4- Ecological synthesis and human well-being II: Biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management
Moderator: Bill Murdoch
Panelists: Jeremy Jackson, Peter Kareiva, Camille Parmesan, Mary Ruckelshaus
4 thoughts on “Panel 4: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management”
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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.
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.
How can we synthesize the observations that conservation biologist have of change in nature? Not just the data.
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.