Today, pressing environmental problems, such as climate change, use of water resources, and food security abound. It is important for society to understand these environmental issues because they impact natural resources needed to sustain life on Earth. One of the biggest challenges in gaining knowledge about how the non-living and living world works is that most research in environmental science has been done at small, local scales, but many current environmental issues operate at regional, continental, and global scales. Thus, scaling up environmental research across space is vital. Macrosystems biology seeks to understand research on biosphere processes and their complex interactions with climate, land use, and changes in species geographic distributions at regional to continental scales. Such large-scale scientific research demands a collaborative team of scientists, including individuals with the ability to integrate across disciplinary and cultural differences, so that insights made are of the highest scientific quality and are socially equitable. Given the collaborative nature of macrosystems biology, advances in this field are made through shared knowledge of the science and of how to promote productive, diverse teams. This meeting will promote knowledge sharing by providing an opportunity for researchers to share insights into macrosystems biology advances and into team science. Through professional development and engagement of a diverse group of scientists, collaboration of active researchers, and generation of new ideas and synthesis of research projects, this meeting will broaden the impact of currently funded Macrosystems biology research. Specific efforts will be made to emphasize perspectives of early-career and traditionally under-represented researchers in all aspects of the workshop.
This conference proposal will support a meeting of project scientists funded through the NSF Macrosystems Biology and National Ecological Observatory Network Enabled Science (MSB-NES) program. The meeting’s theme will be team science with emphases on inclusion and access. The meeting will advance macrosystems biology and NEON enabled science through four goals: 1) facilitating networking and community-building among a diverse group of MSB-NES researchers; 2) reflect on the first ten years of MSB research and outline knowledge gaps to be addressed in the next decade; 3) providing training on team science in a diverse landscape for MSB-NES researchers that will help teams to successfully broaden participation; and 4) identifying aspects of team science that promote open science and inclusion to make accessible insights from MSB-NES research teams to a wide audience.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
