Plenary Symposium
Toward a Collective Disciplinary Agenda for Landscape Ecology: Goals and Strategies
Organizers:
Bruce T. Milne, University of New Mexico
Richard T. T. Forman, Harvard University
John A. Wiens, The Nature Conservancy
Robert H. Gardner, University of Maryland
Background and Goals:
Since the 1980s, landscape ecology has enabled virtually all public and private land management agencies to assess landscape pattern, connectivity, and flows of organisms and resources at multiple scales. In the face of declining oil supplies and global change, many environmental professionals can expect to spend the remainder of their careers engaged in concerted efforts to supply society with renewable energy, clean water, and food while protecting habitat, ameliorating production of greenhouse gases, and managing the proliferation of exotic and pathogenic species. Indeed, all landscapes are connected via the atmosphere, and thus landscape ecology is central to engineering effective greenhouse gas reduction strategies and to the implementation of valid carbon cap and trade systems. With contributions from practitioners, social, political and economic sciences and the arts, landscape ecology could help to alleviate environmental racism and reduce overexploitation of wild lands and endangered habitats. During the descent from fossil fuel, landscape ecology could reinvigorate local production of food and biofuels while maintaining biodiversity via educational outreach and collaborations with professional organizations of planners, architects, developers and farmers. Engagement with commercial media arts and computer scientists could lead to powerful visualization interfaces for simulations, thereby helping stakeholders to participate in scenario-based landscape planning exercises. This symposium will highlight the successes of landscape ecology to date and the potential for creative landscape initiatives in response to environmental challenges. The presenters and audience will be invited to convene afterwards to outline a proposal to the IALE North American Chapter to identify key initiatives that can be disseminated widely and used strategically to help funding agencies justify support for mission oriented landscape ecological research.
Symposium Design:
| 10:00-10:10 | Bruce Milne |
| Introduction: A Collective Disciplinary Agenda for Landscape Ecology - Goals and Strategies | |
| 10:10-10:30 | Richard Forman |
| Landscape Ecology's Legacy and Central Role for Society | |
| 10:30-10:50 | John Wiens |
| Landscape Ecology and Conservation: Melding the Agendas | |
| 10:50-11:10 | Bruce Milne |
| Proactive Landscape Research and the Descent from Fossil Fuels | |
| 11:10-12:00 | Group discussion using the "open space community" approach method that facilitates spontaneous group formation, topic identification, and critique, leading to prioritized suggestions for further action. |