Schweitzer: University of Alaska ? Fairbanks A Social-Ecological System (SES) is broadly defined as a system with interacting and interdependent physical, biological and social components, with a special emphasis on human interactions with nature. As the world?s climate changes, and these intensifying changes increasingly hold ramifications for human populations, the need for concerted analysis of social-ecological systems (SES) is intensified. Such dynamics are especially pronounced in Alaska, but are also present throughout the United States as population shifts and climate changes combine to produce changes in the intricate web of relationships that link human and natural systems.
The increasing urgency of the situation calls for a sharper focus on the methods and means of integrating biological, physical, and social sciences into SES models. The Alaska EPSCoR Social-Ecological Systems Workshop will provide an ideal platform from which to accomplish this. The goals of the SES workshop, to be held in Anchorage in May, 2009, are to enable information-sharing across EPSCoR jurisdictions about SES issues, including both policy and research matters; to identify areas for cross-jurisdictional SES research projects, which will improve funding competitiveness; and to consider collaboration and outreach strategies among researchers, policy-makers, and managers.
Intellectual merit: Workshop speakers will discourse on emerging scientific innovations in social-ecological systems, highlighting new research tools available in the field. As SES is still an emergent field, the workshop will potentially have a transformative effect on SES study. The workshop is specifically designed to build collaborations among NSF EPSCoR researchers and jurisdictions, thereby strengthening the nation?s research capacity.
Broader impact: SES study is by its nature interdisciplinary, and the workshop will include researchers from across the scientific spectrum. It will also heavily involve the policy and management side of SES study, potentially impacting not just how SES researchers proceed but how their findings are utilized and implemented. Speakers will highlight opportunities for STEM educational outreach and workforce development through community-based research. In its study of specific populations SES is inherently concerned with diversity issues, and the workshop will deal with diversity in this sense as well as by tackling the issue of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in SES research.
