Input to Network Planning Grant to NSF

Kay Gross and Dan Childers

October 2003

Introduction

This document summarizes discussions of an ASM workshop held in Seattle in September 2003 that focused on engineered/designed ecosystems. In it, we provide an example of multi-site, cross-disciplinary, novel synthetic science that can be conducted at the network level and can include both LTER and non-LTER long-term sites. The workshop had 21 participants from 8 LTER sites (AND, BES, FCE, KBS, LUQ, NWT, SBC, SEV), and included at least 2 international scientists. The participants included a near even mixture of social and natural scientists, and the interactions were both stimulating and productive. Our objective with this document is to provide this an example of new synthetic science to the LTER Network Executive Committee for incorporation into the Network Planning Grant to be submitted to NSF in February 2004.

Conceptual Framework

An engineered/designed ecosystem is one that has been extensively modified by humans to provide specific ecosystem goods and/or services. The extent to which a natural or native system has been manipulated to provide these services varies greatly. For example, wetlands that provide flood control or natural areas that provide recreation in a growing urban area may appear to be little affected by management. Cities are at the other extreme, having been so extensively modified that their native ecosystem state is often unrecognizable. Often managing ecosystems to provide only a few goods and/or services at the expense of others can have unintended consequences (REF Scheffer et al?). Designed systems (e.g. farms, plantations, engineered wetlands, restored prairies, forests) may fail to function as intended—and thus not be capable of providing the desired ecosystem goods and/or services, fail to provide ancillary functions, or have negative impacts on surrounding systems. We refer to these ecosystems as “altered systems”. These impacts may alter an adjacent ecosystem [in a passive way] without any direct [active] engineering activities. Thus, many landscapes are mosaics of ecosystems of varying degrees of design and impact.

Disturbance is a natural ecosystem process; natural systems regularly oscillate between natural and disturbed conditions. Humans sometimes cause disturbances, or modify the intensity, frequency, and extent of natural disturbances (e.g., by channelizing waterways), and humans may modify the process of recovery. Similarly, recovery from natural disturbances may be [either positively or negatively] affected by human activities. In landscape mosaics that are strongly influenced by human activities, the influence of human activities on disturbances and recovery varies considerably. It is critical that we understand the social, political, and economic processes that determine the types of designed systems in a landscape mosaic and how they function (ecologically and economically) and impact surrounding systems in order to fully understand how landscape patterns and processes interact.

Recognition that all landscapes are influenced by the engineering activities of humans allows us to develop a broader conceptual model of how both natural and anthropogenic activities can impact ecosystem structure and function (Figure 1). A starting point would be to develop a robust metrics of ecosystem functions and services that could be used to identify impaired systems more objectively. This conceptual model show also depicts how natural processes that drive recovery from disturbance in a ‘natural system’ (which is a ‘natural passive process’) may be disrupted by human activities in altered or engineered systems, and identify situations in which recovery may have to be facilitated by active management. Similarly, restoration of a poorly functioning ‘altered system’ (e.g. a degraded farm or forest) to a ‘native system’ may rely only on natural processes, may be actively engineered or accelerated, or may be some combination of the two (Fig. 1). In this conceptualization, ecosystem restoration is an engineering process that attempts to improve the ecosystem function of disturbed or degraded systems [lb1] . In contrast, ecosystem rehabilitation is the process by which an altered system is engineered into a designed system that will/can provide specific goods and services (one of which may be ‘naturalness’). At any time, ecosystems following the trajectories from one system classification to another can also be found in a given landscape—often in response to complex and non-linear human-ecosystem feedback processes driven by [both informed and uninformed] societal decisions. This view allows us to consider landscapes as mosaics of these 4 types of ecosystems, including legacies of past ecosystem engineering activities, while also actively considering the societal priorities and decisions that control these landscapes.

Sample Synthesis Questions

1. What are the societal goals, decision processes, and tradeoffs associated with designing ecosystems to provide 1 or a few services at the expense of others?

a. How does society come to recognize and to value ecosystem services?

b. How does society come to recognize (and be concerned about) consequences of their activities on ecosystem processes (resilience)?

c. What do we need to understand about societal systems in order to design engineered ecosystems that meet societal goals while also maximizing ecosystem goods and services?

2. How can we use ecological principles to design an engineered ecosystem that provides or enhances services that society values and were provided by the past [natural] ecosystem?

a. How can we test ecological theory on these engineered ecosystems?

3. How are adjacent/other systems affected by their connectivity to designed ecosystems (or those being modified to designed systems)?

a. How does buffering or restoring these secondary systems play into the goal/decision process in the first place?

Motivation and Justification for Network Synthesis

This topic of engineered/designs is an important focus for network-level synthesis and development for several reasons. We live in landscapes that are becoming increasingly designed and engineered, and the network of LTER sites occur across a broad spectrum of these types of landscapes. Scientists who work in the LTER network of sites thus represent the full spectrum of expertise needed to develop a broad and integrative understanding of the social and ecological processes that influence the functioning of designed systems. The LTER Network itself allows this group to address these issues at site (community or system), landscape/regional, and continental scales. It is clear that we need a better understanding of how societal goals and decision processes are drivers of ecosystem and landscape change, and how ecosystem services are often being disrupted even as ecosystems are engineered to maximize delivery of economically valuable goods. In this synthetic research, we envision the better use of ecological, social, and economic knowledge to improve human well-being through better designed ecosystems. This process will necessarily advance basic theory in all of these research fields.

It is also necessary that, while we are conducting this synthetic research, we are also increasing public awareness and understanding of how societal decisions and ecological consequences are linked. The costs of engineering, restoring, and rehabilitating ecosystems are often high, both economically and ecologically. Thus, it is imperative that society use the best available information when setting goals and making decisions about the design and management of ecosystems. Worldwide, there are many socio-ecological challenges that can be met only through an understanding of the local cultures and political processes affecting ecological systems. As such, a final additional motivation and goal is to involve many different social and political models in this synthetic, multi-disciplinary research.

Challenges for Synthesis

To succeed, this multi-disciplinary synthetic research approach must meet several challenges. We must first assess how LTER science is currently being used to inform and enhance the valuation of ecosystem goods and services in designed ecosystems. We propose to meet this challenge by partnering [g2] with the growing group of ecological economists researching these issues both within and outside the LTER network. We also need to identify areas of basic research that are needed to better inform the design of ecosystems relative to the delivery and provisioning of ecosystem services. This basic research will undoubtedly involve ecology and other natural sciences, sociology, and economics. This new basic research agenda will provide opportunities for novel integrations among researchers, questions, and analyses from these fields. The result of this multi-site, multi-disciplinary, synthetic research will provide society with important tools for management of the environment and economic systems. It will also identify new areas for research in the ‘science disciplines’ that would support these decisions. A network level synthetic effort in this area will be an excellent example of how LTER science can be directly applied to present societal challenges and to enrich/expand the basic sciences.