A team of 15 social-ecological and site-based research groups within the ILTER community have been working to develop a coordinated effort to contribute to the understanding of how policies and technologies drive either towards or away from the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services. This effort is based on three tenets: trans-disciplinary research; cross scale interactions and dynamics; and an ecological stewardship orientation. The overarching goal of the collaborative project is to formulate management practices taking into account trade-offs between using and safeguarding ecosystems towards more sustainable solutions. To that end, we have defined a conceptual approach connecting ecosystem integrity, ecosystem services and stakeholder well-being. We propose this approach is key to analyze, understand and deal with the trade-offs among ecosystem services that are intrinsic to many management options. A recently published paper in Ecology and Society [21(3):31], within the “PECS special issue”, describes the conceptual framework and the strategy we defined for this ILTER/PECS collaboration. 

 

It is an open initiative and we would like to take the opportunity to promote it within the PECS community. Our workshop will take place the next morning after the end of II PECS meeting, according to the following program:

 

Saturday November 11th

09:00 – 09:20   (20 min) “The ILTER/PECS initiative: Changes in biodiversity and trade-offs among ecosystem services, stakeholders and components of well-being” (Manuel Maass et al.). 

09:20 – 09:40   (20 min) “Ecosystem Integrity: conceptual development, methods and implementation for environmental change monitoring (Miguel Equihua et al.).

09:40 – 10:00   (20 min) “Ecosystem Integrity and policy coherence for development” (Harlan Koff et al.).

10:00 – 10:20   (20 min) Long-Term Ecosystem Monitoring at ILTER (to be confirmed).

10:20 – 10:35   (15 min) Coffee break

10:35 – 12:00   (85 min) Study case presentations (open to submissions).

12:00 – 13:00   (60 min) Discussion (fostering collaboration with new groups).

 

 

Please notice that there is a current open call for presenting study cases, not only for those groups already engaged in the ILTER/PECS initiative, but also for those groups that identify themselves as potential collaborators (within or outside the ILTER community).  We have space for 5-8 for these “study case” presentations, if you are interested please submit an abstract before August 1th.  Accepted abstract will be noticed August 15th.  Workshop registration will end on August 30th.

 

For those interested in presenting a “study case”, please be sure to read the ILTER/PECS initiative (https://goo.gl/e4zbL7) and prepare the talk along those lines. Those abstracts not accepted for oral presentation, will have the opportunity to display their study cases as a poster during the meeting.