Scientific coordinator: Claire Saraux
Most natural ecosystems have been colonized and exploited by humans, becoming Socio-Eco-Systems SES. During the last three centuries that mark the Anthropocene, humankind’s global footprint in ecosystems has dramatically increased worldwide, with major impacts on their compartments and functioning (e.g. climate, pollution, biodiversity). Ecosystems will be even more intensively used in the future as long the human population, habits and uses keep growing. Altogether, increased human pressure on ecosystems (land/sea use change, direct exploitation of finite resources), global change (climate, pollution and biological invasions), and economic instability urge decision makers to frame new paradigms for sustainable development and One Health for all living forms including humans. Locally relevant indicators of the system’s state were developed to prompt public awareness and action. Yet the extend at broader scales (e.g. the landscape scale) as a tool to foster changes in management from a system dynamics perspective is lacking. To achieve such a goal, appropriate integrated understanding of the complex interdependent biophysical and social dynamics is needed. SESs combine interdependent social and ecological dynamics that involve multiple interactions and feedbacks between the human and ecological components. Some processes are common to all SESs whereas others are more specific depending on the nature of the territory and of the intensity of these interactions. The TEAM will develop transdisciplinary action-oriented research aiming at gathering explicit academic and stakeholder knowledge, as well as cooperation between science and society to assess the effects of global change on ecosystems, biodiversity and society and to propose scientific-based support for decision in favour of sustainable SESs. The TEAM will work on diverse, yet representative systems throughout a gradient from the most isolated (polar, arid, marine), the more common (forests, wetlands) to the most common (agricultural, rural and urban) areas while applying when possible four complementary approaches.
- Interindividual heterogeneity and population dynamics
- Ecosystem responses to management methods
- Human-nature relationships
- Science-based support for decision making and sustainable SES
