# Presentation: 025993

## Breakout Session C1:Integration of Disciplinary Areas

- BE vs. be
- Deal with interdisciplinary work in grants and areas outside the BE program
- Emphasize priorities in complex environmental systems to disciplinary panels, esp. interacting human and natural systems (not to replace core science)

## Session C1

- Interdisciplinary
- Approaches
- (BE $)

**UNIVERSITY****ADMINISTRATORS**

**DEANS**

- Next generations
- of researchers,
- But does this lead to

- How
- Long
- Will
- This
- Take?

## Session C1

- Synthesis

- Scientific
- Questions

- GIS

- Modeling

- Sensors

## Session C1

- “ecologist” & “economist”
- Or
- “economist” & “ecologist”
- Vs.
- Real Collaboration

- “help”

## Session C1

- To help future BE projects

- Current
- Biocomplexity
- Studies

- Really study current projects
- To see what worked
- And what did not

## Breakout Session C2:

**Environmental Synthesis I**
**Integration of disciplinary areas into broad interdisciplinary approaches**

## Researcher Networks

-  Assembling BE teams:
- -tendency toward “checklist” approach
- -should be based on based on previous interactions
- -opportunities were limited before BE but this is now changing

**Session C2**

## Session C2:

**Researcher Networks (con’t)**

- Continuing our collaborations
- -Many teams will just be gaining momentum after 5 years
- -Will there be opportunities to continue these interactions?  What is the expected time horizon of individual projects?

## Session C2:

**Session C2:**
**Synthesis**

-  workshops, planning grants to *summarize and synthesize* results
-  follow up proposals for cross-site comparisons
-  conference like this one years from now when projects, results are more mature

## Session C2:

**Infrastructure Developments**

-  Some BE projects have developed extensive computing capability
-  Programmers are needed - draw on computer science students looking for projects?
-  Draw on NEON infrastructure if initiated
-  Directory of technical expertise and technology from BE instrumentation projects

## Session C2:

**Water as a complex system**

-  some concern that this significantly narrows the scope of BE
-  will this be one of several potential BE topics?

## Breakout Session C3:Integration of Disciplinary Areas

- Reseacher Networks
- Web site for posting BE abstracts, PI contact information, and links to individual project pages
- Meeting/symposia on BE within existing professional societies
- Newsletter
- List of participants

## Session C3

- 2,3, and 4) Opportunities, Gaps, Synthesis, and WATER
- Organize/fund “National Center for Biocomplexity”
- Model after similar for ecology (e.g., NCEAS)
- Virtual and/or Real
- Go there for research on existing data sets
- THINK TANK

## Breakout Session C4:International Cooperation for “Sustainable Development”

-  Unique international partnerships in BE ?
-  BE to benefit of international community ?

## Session C4:Message!

- Major benefits in international partnerships
- “Cool”, but more than just cool
- True collaborations (not scientific imperialism)
- Int. collaborators bring expertise, alternate perspectives, gained from diverse cultural, environmental and scientific experience
- With regard to LDC: responsibility to support (or support development of) “true” collaborators
- NSF should (continue to) support International collaboration !!

## Session C4:Unique international partnerships in BE ?

- Many *biocomplexity* issues are global issues!
- land, oceans and atmosphere; land-use, biodiversity, pollution, economics, trade – an international perspective is needed
- BE and NSF allow fundamental (not only applied) research: stimulating/enriching (especially for LDC collaborators), and provide better grounding for applied science.
- Further - the *systems approach* implicit in BE is particularly suited to applied problems !
- Great opportunities via IGBP, IHDP, WMO, ICSU etc.
- Provide an umbrella for collaborative science and “sexed-up” proposals
- Funding and collaborative opportunities exist in the UN, NGO and Private Foundation arenas (but these can be v. hard to navigate!)

## Session C4:BE to benefit of international community ?

- Scientist level
- the benefits of collaborative science: scientific advancement, career advancement, publications, etc.  (and/or enhanced training opportunities in countries where student opportunities are limited)
- Engagement with international scientific community, international scientific networking and communication
- Skills that contribute to teaching and research in home countries
- National level
- Policy and management understanding and tools that derive from the BE/systems approach
- e.g.  IVth Framework conventions & carbon trading
- Applied solutions to complex problems in the environment, development and sustainability

## Session C4:Issues

- Recognition and $$ support for Int. collaborators can be difficult (Fastlane registration works!).
- We’re often forced to explore multiple and complex funding sources for International collaborations
- “Homeland” & Int. collaboration...? (visas!)
- BE and NSF-INT (new INT funding for BE research?)
- NSF Facilitation Role ?
- For matching funds that support Int. partners
- Sister agencies in other countries
- Alternative funding sources for countries where research support limited (UN, foundations)

## Session C4:“Code of Practice” for International Research

- An NSF-INT workshop ?
- “Cutting through Scientific Imperialism”

## BE research offers special opportunities for addressing questions that are relevant to more sustainable development, and international projects provide both special rewards and challenges to NSF research.

- NSF could encourage more research and international collaborations that focus on sustainable development issues, and which therefore involve significant capacity-building components to the collaborations.

- Suggestions

- Breakout Session C5:
- International Cooperaton

## Session C5

- In particular, compensation rules and guidelines (e.g., what’s allowed, what’s not, Best Practices) require greater clarity & consistency, since different programs at NSF have different requirements or interpretations.
- (In some cases, a compensation-for-output model of support was recommended over a “development” style of bulk payment.)
- Professional societies’ codes of ethics could be reflected and reinforced.
- Although data-sharing with host countries is an important goal in general, NSF should allow the discretion of researchers, balancing risks & harms, to withhold data about particularly sensitive issues (e.g., the locations of at risk species, habitats, or human communities).
- Concerns about contributing to “brain drain” in host countries were discussed.
- Results of Prior Support should include accomplishments in areas of capacity building.

## Session C5

- This could help make development efforts more science-based.
- And help create the basic human and physical infrastructure that is beyond the capacity-building efforts of single research projects.
- NSF should consider ways of providing greater budgetary flexibility to international projects.
- changes in currency exchange rates over the course of a project may greatly alter the ability to support the proposed research.
- Following international protocols (e.g., prolonged in-country visits for capacity-building) may increase project costs

## BE research, building on regional and global data products and research from such agencies as NASA and NOAA, offers opportunities to address transboundary dynamics in highly integrative ways.

- US-funded research can thereby contribute to solving complex transboundary problems.
- US-based researchers can serve as cultural ambassadors in international settings, providing positive individual role-models to people whose other associations with US policy may be less positive.

- Session C5

## Breakout Session C6:The Future of Biocomplexity

- Programmatic issues
- Forecasting issues
- Tools
- What should we have learned by 2010
- What should BE look like in 2010

## Session C6:Programmatic Issues

- Potential for renewal or new grants from current recipients
- Maybe program should be permanent
- Do we need an institute (maybe like NCEAS) on complex environmental systems as a training/resource center?
- Sense that CNH is particularly unique within BE and should be on-going.
- Need more social scientists at the table.

## Session C6:Forecasting Issues

- We need to go beyond hypothesis testing toward science-based decision making.
- “models of everything” are problematic
- Forecasting drives development of models, but feedbacks, path dependence, multiple equillibria make prediction difficult
- Question could be recast to: what can we and what can we not know or predict?

## Session C6:Forecasting Issues (cont.)

- Dealing with questions of sustainability in current systems often becomes politicized.
- Balance between basic and applied nature of research is important.  Often breaks down to dealing with long- vs. short-term problems.
- Hurricane prediction a good example of need to link model outputs with understanding of behavior (predictions tempered by possibility of being wrong – i.e., crying wolf).

## Session C6:Tools

- BE could consider setting up virtual centers from projects that are topically similar, perhaps toward the end of the program. These could address data and cultural issues discussed earlier
- Distributed/mobile sensor networks needed on land.

## Session C6:What should we know by 2010?

- To what degree are some earth systems resilient to human perturbations of various magnitudes?
- What patterns of human settlements are most resilient?
- To what degree can policies be tuned to the spatial and temporal scales of social and environmental processes?
- How can multiple policies be implemented such that they are compatible for various ends?

## A slew of examples in which dynamics of a system learned through a BE project have improved function/ management of that system.
Be able to explain what Biocomplexity is to congress.
Be able to demonstrate how biocomplexity perspective complements traditional perspectives in the natural sciences.

- Be able to explain what Biocomplexity is to congress.
- Be able to demonstrate how biocomplexity perspective complements traditional perspectives in the natural sciences.

- Session C6:What should we know by 2010? (cont.)

## Session C6:What should BE look like in 2010?

- A $1 billion / year permanent program.

## Breakout Sessions C7 and C8:The Future of Biocomplexity

- Forecasting versus predicting
- Agent-based modeling approaches are promising techniques
- Historians are important experts than can help inform modeling activities.
- How well can we explore the probabilities of outcomes (game theory, market models)
- Expert judgment/Delphi techniques can be valuable approaches
- View human “systems” as part of the natural system  they are not different
- Need to address assumption of forecasting goal.  It is likely that there are multiple states.  These can be framed as scenarios and placed in risk assessment framework.
- Need to reconstruct models that might consider optimization.
- Is there a lack of a common theory that ties human systems to natural systems?  Resilience, panarchy, tipping points.
- Detailed historical studies.  Lack of “experiments” that integrate human and natural systems.

- Question 1.

## Sessions C7 and C8

- Question 2.
- Answered above.  All to the list cited.
- Faster computers.
- Methods that integrate social science, and bio- and physical science approaches (surveys and models)
- Question 3
- Advance ability of disciplines to communicate with one another.
- Have humans more integrated into the natural system.
- More unified theory of how humans integrate natural systems.

## Sessions C7 and C8

- By 2010, we must be able to test BE hypotheses with greater certainty
- Going beyond discovery-based science?
- By 2010, we must have more, well-trained scientists that can take on cross-cutting BE challenges.