What Kind of Scientist Are You? Science and Interdisciplinary Research

Scientific research that crosses disciplinary boundaries (“interdisciplinary research”) – and in particular, research that crosses academic boundaries to engage with industry, government and non-government agencies, and the broader public – can be rewarding personally and yield novel approaches and findings. While the scholarly literature suggests that interdisciplinary approaches are of immense value, interdisciplinary research carries challenges to academics, particularly in terms of funding and in relation to finding an academic “home.” In this article, the author outlines what is meant by interdisciplinary research and reflects on her career leading from graduate school to tenure. She illustrates how the interdisciplinary projects she has been involved in have been both rewarding and challenging. While not every scientist must be interdisciplinary, she concludes that being open to such an approach has many advantages.La recherche scientifique qui dépasse les frontières disciplinaires (la recherche « interdisciplinaire ») —et, particulièrement, celle qui dépasse les frontières académiques pour s’engager avec l’industrie, les agences gouvernementales et nongouvernementales et le public—peuvent être personnellement enrichissantes et engendrer de nouvelles approches et résultats. Même si la littérature académique indique que les approches interdisciplinaires ont beaucoup de mérite, la recherche interdisciplinaire pose des défis aux universitaires, notamment par rapport à l’obtention de subventions et la possibilité de trouver un chez-soi académique. Dans cet article, l’auteure décrit ce que l’on entend par recherche interdisciplinaire et réfléchit sur son propre parcours, des études supérieures à la titularisation. Elle montre ainsi comment les projets interdisciplinaires auxquels elle a participé ont été à la fois enrichissants et stimulants pour elle. Elle conclut que, bien que chaque savant ne doive pas être interdisciplinaire, être ouvert à une telle approche a plusieurs avantages

How Landscape Ecology Informs Global Land-Change Science and Policy

Landscape ecology is a discipline that explicitly considers the influence of time and space on the environmental patterns we observe and the processes that create them. Although many of the topics studied in landscape ecology have public policy implications, three are of particular concern: climate change; land use–land cover change (LULCC); and a particular type of LULCC, urbanization. These processes are interrelated, because LULCC is driven by both human activities (e.g., agricultural expansion and urban sprawl) and climate change (e.g., desertification). Climate change, in turn, will affect the way humans use landscapes. Interactions among these drivers of ecosystem change can have destabilizing and accelerating feedback, with consequences for human societies from local to global scales. These challenges require landscape ecologists to engage policymakers and practitioners in seeking long-term solutions, informed by an understanding of opportunities to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic drivers on ecosystems and adapt to new ecological realities

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services

Birding 2.0: Citizen Science and Effective Monitoring in the Web 2.0 World

The amateur birding community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to bird surveys and bird atlases. Coordinated activities such as Breeding Bird Atlases and the Christmas Bird Count are examples of "citizen science" projects. With the advent of technology, Web 2.0 sites such as eBird have been developed to facilitate online sharing of data and thus increase the potential for real-time monitoring. However, as recently articulated in an editorial in this journal and elsewhere, monitoring is best served when based on a priori hypotheses. Harnessing citizen scientists to collect data following a hypothetico-deductive approach carries challenges. Moreover, the use of citizen science in scientific and monitoring studies has raised issues of data accuracy and quality. These issues are compounded when data collection moves into the Web 2.0 world. An examination of the literature from social geography on the concept of "citizen sensors" and volunteered geographic information (VGI) yields thoughtful reflections on the challenges of data quality/data accuracy when applying information from citizen sensors to research and management questions. VGI has been harnessed in a number of contexts, including for environmental and ecological monitoring activities. Here, I argue that conceptualizing a monitoring project as an experiment following the scientific method can further contribute to the use of VGI. I show how principles of experimental design can be applied to monitoring projects to better control for data quality of VGI. This includes suggestions for how citizen sensors can be harnessed to address issues of experimental controls and how to design monitoring projects to increase randomization and replication of sampled data, hence increasing scientific reliability and statistical power

Representative reserve design in Canada: the contribution of existing protected areas

N

Importance of boreal forested wetlands for epiphytic macrolichen communities

Forested wetlands provide ecosystem services and often support elevated levels of biodiversity and rare species. However, forested wetlands are understudied and face threats such as logging and land conversion. Epiphytic lichens are abundant in forested wetlands and may be useful to help delineate microhabitats across wetland–upland gradients. We investigated epiphytic macrolichen richness, diversity, and community composition in 15 sites in the Avalon Forest Ecoregion, Newfoundland, Canada. Within each site, we set up three parallel 40 m transects in (i) the forested wetland, (ii) the ecotone, and (iii) the upland forest. Along each transect, we selected five balsam fir (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) trees 10 m apart and surveyed for macrolichens on the lower bole. We collected data on tree height and tree diameter at breast height, which differed significantly among forest types. We also collected data on tree age and canopy cover, which did not differ significantly among forest types. Contrary to hypotheses suggesting that biodiversity is highest in ecotones, we found that mean macrolichen richness was significantly higher in wetlands, lower in the ecotones, and lowest in upland forests, and macrolichen diversity followed a similar pattern but with no significant difference among groups. Macrolichen community composition significantly differed among wetlands, ecotones, and upland forests. A lichen of conservation concern, Erioderma pedicellatum (Hue) P.M. Jørg., was detected primarily in forested wetlands, highlighting wetlands as key habitats for rare epiphytic macrolichens.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Beta diversity and nature reserve system design a case study from the Yukon, Canada

Design of protected areas has focused on setting targets for representation of biodiversity, but often these targets do not include prescriptions as to how large protected areas should be or where they should be located. Principles of island biogeography theory have been applied with some success, but they have limitations. The so-called SLOSS (single large or several small reserves) debate hinged on applications of island biogeography theory to protected areas but was resolved only to the point that parties agreed there might be different approaches in different situations. Although proponents on both sides of the SLOSS debate generally agree that replicating protected areas is desirable, it is difficult to determine how to replicate reserves in terms of number and spatial arrangement. More important, many targets for representation often do not address issues of species persistence. Here, we used a geographic information system in a study of disturbancesensitive mammals of the Yukon Territory, Canada, to design a protected-areas network that maintains a historical assemblage of species goals for component ecoregions. We simultaneously determined patterns of diversity as Whittaker’s beta and compositional turnover and examined how these two measures can give further insights into reserve location and spatial arrangement. Both regional heterogeneity and compositional turnover between nonadjacent sites were significant predictors of the number of protected areas necessary to represent mammals within each ecoregion. Thus, protected-area planners can use diversity measures to identify number and spacing of protected areas within ecologically bounded regions