Distributed Graduate Seminars

Sustaining the systems that support life while meeting human needs represents one of the greatest challenges that we face in the 21st century. Sustainability science is a use-inspired science aimed at addressing this challenge. This two-year distributed graduate seminar connected six institutions to address core concepts in sustainability science and to develop model systems for advancement of theory and tools for sustainable management. Four key outcomes included:

1. A curriculum and publicly accessible wiki for sustainability science to provide a pedagogic foundation for the emerging field;

2. The development of model systems for sustainability science to promote rapid advances;
3. 
A synthesis of key insights from applying a sustainability science framework to these model systems; and
4. 
A series of team case studies including inclusive valuation of shifts in land-use and restoration to aid decision making.

Principal Investigators: Jeannine Cavender-Bares and Stephen Polasky

Participating Universities

• Arizona State University

• Centro de Investigaciones en Ecosystemas (CIEco), UNAM, Mexico
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Florida International University

• Harvard University

• Princeton University

• University of Minnesota
• 
Cornell University

Mycorrhizal symbioses, in which plants exchange carbohydrates for nutrients with root associated fungal symbionts, are classically considered a mutualism. But they can display a high degree of variability in ecological outcomes ranging from mutualism to parasitism. Given the ubiquity and importance of this interaction, understanding the controls on its variability is paramount for basic and applied ecology.

One centerpiece activity of a previous NCEAS working group (“Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Mycorrhizal Management,” 2005-2007) was to initiate an effort to understand this ecological variability through an empirical synthesis of mycorrhizal inoculation experiments. As part of that effort, we created a database of nearly 2000 such experiments, and developed innovative new methods for multi-factor meta-analysis to assess the relative importance of numerous biotic and abiotic factors hypothesized to explain variation among experiments in plant responses to mycorrhizal inoculation. Although important insights were gained from that analysis, it revealed limitations of the approach which prevented full exploitation of that effort.

Through this distributed graduate network project, participants addressed these limitations to answer fundamental questions about context-dependency in mycorrhizal symbiosis.

Principal Investigators: Jason Hoeksema and James Bever 

Participating Universities

• Indiana University
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Montana State University

• New Mexico State University

• Northern Arizona University

• Oklahoma State University
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Pennsylvania State University
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University of British Columbia (Okanagan)
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University of Mississippi
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University of North Carolina  

With easy access to large-volume public datasets now commonplace, high-quality data are available to investigate many ecological questions and issues of interest to scientists, policymakers, and citizens. Many people, however, do not have the experience or skills to search, use, analyze and interpret these data. The Ecological Society of America (ESA), in close partnership with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), facilitated a Distributed Graduate Seminar to focus on examining effective student activities and assessment strategies for using large public datasets in the classroom.

This seminar built on a preliminary education framework generated at a 2008 ESA faculty workshop, organized to make recommendations to NEON as they developed their education and outreach plan. Faculty participants at the summer 2009 seminar designed undergraduate teaching modules focused on topics such as climate change and polar bears, patterns in bird diversity, and the carbon cycle. Developed with current learning theory in mind, they emphasized student active-teaching methodologies that are inquiry based and participatory. 

The teaching activities provided undergraduate students the means to better understand ecological concepts, and to gain experience in applying quantitative skills to the analysis and interpretation of large-volume datasets effectively.

Principal Investigators: Teresa Mourad, Wendy Gram, Bruce Grant

Participating Universities

• Alcorn State University

• Brown University

• Clarkson University

• Diné College

• Ecological Society of America

• Hampton University
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National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
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New College of Florida

• Swarthmore College
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University of Puerto Rico

• Widener University

A key objective of landscape genetics is to study how landscape modification and habitat fragmentation affect organism dispersal and gene flow across the landscape. Landscape genetics requires highly interdisciplinary, yet specialized professionals, and makes intensive use of spatial analysis tools such as remote sensing, GIS software and spatial statistics that have not historically been a component of training programs for population geneticists. Even when students receive disciplinary training in several of the involved fields of landscape genetics, educational programs lack the necessary linkage and synthesis among disciplines. This linkage can only be accomplished after experts from each discipline work together to develop guiding principles for this new research area.

This distributed graduate seminar united some of the most active landscape genetics groups in North America and Europe. It drew on the experience of experts both in population genetics and landscape ecology with the goal of providing an integrated overview of approaches for testing the effect of landscape pattern on dispersal and gene flow, a key topic of landscape genetics.

Principal Investigators: Helene Wagner and Lisette Waits 

Participating Universities

• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH
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Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL
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Universite Joseph Fourier, France
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University of Alaska, Southeast

• University of California, Los Angeles
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University of Idaho
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University of Montana 

• USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station

There is increasing concern among scientists, resource managers, and the general public about the current state of marine fisheries and their supporting ecosystems. Recent scientific progress on this topic has been partly overshadowed by significant controversy about how to assess marine resources and how to address current problems in ocean management. Marine ecologists and fisheries scientists often tend to favor contrasting approaches, and these schools of thought have become polarized over time.

Recognizing this situation as counterproductive, an NCEAS working group defined common ground among marine ecologists and fisheries scientists and identified areas of continued disagreement. The central question addressed was how can we merge contrasting objectives, tools, and scientific criteria among marine ecology, fisheries science, and management into a unifying framework.

One of the solutions to polarization was to expose young scientists to the goals and approaches of the various interested parties dealing with these issues.  With the support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, NCEAS coordinated a Distributed Graduate Seminar that involved graduate students and mentors from six universities in the research process.

Principal Investigators: Ray Hilborn, Boris Worm, Stephanie Hampton 

Participating Universities

• Dalhousie University
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Simon Fraser University

• Stanford University
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University of New Hampshire

• University of Patagonia, Puerto Madryn

• University of Washington

Reports by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission recommend specific actions necessary to drive advances in ocean governance, including the use of marine protected areas (MPAs) as tools for ecosystem-based management. With coastal development, pollution, and resource extraction pressures on MPAs increasing, national and international efforts are focusing on developing MPAs in the context of the ecosystems, both terrestrial and marine, in which they occur.

This Distributed Graduate Seminar was dedicated to clarifying the role of MPAs as tools for ecosystem-based management. The National Marine Sanctuary Program, one of the primary MPA management programs in U.S. Federal waters, served as a vehicle for this exploration. Graduate students from Hawaii to New Hampshire examined how growing scientific understanding of ecosystem processes within MPAs and evolving ocean-observing capabilities can enable the management of MPAs as integral components of the ecosystems in which they reside.

Principal Investigators: Robert Pavia and James Lindholm

Participating Universities

• California State University, Monterey Bay

• Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology/University of Hawaii

• University of California at Santa Barbara
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University of Michigan

• University of New Hampshire

• University of Rhode Island
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University of South Florida

• University of Washington

This seminar determined the extent to which ecological and economic impacts of non-native forest pests and pathogens can be quantified. More >>

Principal Investigators: Juliann Aukema

Participating Universities

• Colorado State University, Fort Collins
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North Carolina State University
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Northern Arizona University

• Oregon State University
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State University of New York, Syracuse

• University of Minnesota
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University of Montana

Human activities are increasingly altering the environment in ways that impact plant communities and ecosystems. Climate change, invasive species, and nutrient enrichment of natural ecosystems are all examples of such environmental changes. The seminar focused on emerging areas of research that are advancing functional ecology. A major goal was to develop approaches to help predict how plant species and communities will shift in response to environmental changes. In particular, the team sought to connect plant traits, which reflect both ecological function and evolutionary history, to species responses to altered environmental conditions.

To accomplish this goal, they brought together datasets from numerous locations throughout North America, including experimental manipulations of nitrogen, water, temperature and species composition, as well as observational datasets along existing environmental gradients. The capstone meeting combined analyses and techniques from each institution to generate predictions regarding national-level responses of plant communities to environmental change such as invasive species and nitrogen enrichment.

Principal Investigators: Elsa Cleland, Scott Collins, Katharine Suding 

Participating Universities

• Columbia University

• Florida International University, Miami

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of California, Irvine

• University of California, Santa Barbara

• University of Houston, Texas
• 
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Through this seminar, participants investigated the role of biodiversity in the landscapes that humans manage intensively. They reviewed the evidence for and against the idea that biodiversity can enhance the value humans receive from heavily managed landscapes, such as agriculture or cattle production. More >>

Principal Investigator: Fabrice De Clerck

Participating Universities:

• UC Santa Barbara
• Kansas State University
• UC Davis
• Oregon State University
• University of Toledo
• American Museum of Natural History

There have been a wide range of efforts to implement ecosystem management in various systems (e.g., the Everglades, Greater Yellowstone, the Interior Columbia Basin, Serengeti-Mara, and the Great Barrier Reef). Although there have been several recent reviews of ecosystem management, these had not been quantitative or deeply analytical. This project used a distributed graduate seminar model to examine information regarding past ecosystem-based management efforts.

Participants considered factors such as explicit goals, key elements and sequencing of the process, institutional attributes, implementation, degree of integration of science and decision-making, and outcomes. Faculty and graduate students from seven universities collaborated to assess successes and failures. They evaluated why particular efforts succeeded and failed, and identified lessons learned for management of coastal-marine systems.

Locally, participants in each seminar collaborated to synthesize data for a particular example of ecosystem-based management and to develop a database of EBM activities and attributes. Participants in each seminar collaborated to synthesize data for a particular example of ecosystem-based management and to develop a database of EBM activities and attributes.

A final working group meeting, involving 43 graduate students and faculty members from all participating universities, was held at NCEAS in February of 2005 to synthesize information from all case studies.

Principal Investigator: Sandy Andelman

Participating Universities

• Ben Gurion University, Israel
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Florida International University

• University of New Hampshire
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University of Queensland, Australia
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University of California, Santa Barbara

• University of Washington

• Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Understanding biocomplexity and other dimensions of ecological systems necessitates a holistic approach that can be achieved only by identifying, retrieving, and synthesizing diverse data from distributed sources and by collaboration among scientists from a broad range of disciplines, investigating many different systems.

In a series of multi-campus graduate seminars, students in ecology, natural resource management, informatics, and statistics explored a variety of topics related to biocomplexity research and ecological synthesis. Participants used newly developed ecoinformatics tools and principles to investigate the relationship between species richness and productivity, and to test the efficacy of the tools. Data were derived from local LTER sites and student representatives from each university participated at NCEAS in comparing results across sites.

Principal Investigator: Sandy Andelman

Participating Universities

• Arizona State University

• Michigan State University

• Stanford University

• Texas Tech University

• University of California, Santa Barbara

• University of Louisiana

• University of New Mexico

• University of North Carolina

• University of Notre Dame

In collaboration with the Society for Conservation Biology, NCEAS developed this seminar involving 19 universities, 23 faculty and over 200 graduate students who together evaluated the effectiveness of recovery plans for endangered species. Graduate students gathered data and developed a large database of a representative sample of recovery plans. Recovery plans for 181 species were reviewed during the project.

Using only the information presented in the recovery plan and the original listing document for the species, seminar participants recorded more than 2600 specific data about each recovery plan. Student representatives from each school came to NCEAS to participate in analyzing the data and developing scientific publications and policy recommendations to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, based on this analysis.

The project successfully accomplished the most detailed and comprehensive review of endangered species recovery plans yet conducted, and produced a rich database of information on the content and characteristics of these planning documents. Analyses of the database have identified many positive aspects of recovery plans, and also suggested specific ways in which the recovery planning process could be improved.

View Archived Project Website >>

Principal Investigator: Peter Kareiva, Dee Boersman, Sandy Andelman

Participating Universities

• Arizona State University
• Colorado State University
• Cornell University
• Duke University
• Iowa State University
• Notre Dame University
• Texas A&M University
• UC Berkeley
• UC Davis
• UC Santa Barbara
• University of Idaho
• University of Maine
• University of Minnesota
• University of Nevada
• University of Tennessee
• University of Washington
• University of Wisconsin
• Utah State University

NCEAS collaborated with the American Institute of Biological Sciences to examine the scientific basis of Habitat Conservation Plans prepared under the Endangered Species Act. This one-year working group project included a Distributed Graduate Seminar held at eight universities. The seminars included 119 researches, including 106 students and 13 faculty members.

The group reviewed Habitat Conservation Plans to evaluate the extent to which scientific data and methods were used in developing and justifying the agreements, and also recommended ways to strengthen the role of science in conservation planning.

Download their final report >>

Principal Investigators: Peter Kareiva

Participating Universities

• Florida State University

• North Carolina State University
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University of California, Berkeley
• 
University of California, Santa Barbara

• University of California, Santa Cruz

• University of Virginia
• 
University of Washington

• Yale University