Linking Landscapes: Emerging Technologies, Culture, and Ecosystem Function

Now, more than ever, developing nations are facing concerns surrounding basic human needs such as water scarcity and food security.  These concerns are likely to escalate if predictive climate change and population growth models are even remotely accurate.  In approaching these concerns, ecologists and engineers are often tasked with developing technical solutions. While we (as scientists) may be uniquely positioned to develop solutions, the ultimate success of these solutions over the long-term is dependent on a variety of components that are often not fully addressed. This presentation will focus on some of the components critical to long-term success of technical applications to address developing country concerns, while at the same time recognize some of the difficulties that arise, such as limited environmental requirements, lack of baseline data, and an often disparate human-nature binary. In addition, the scale at which we approach these growing concerns is pivotal in directing sound solutions.  We must account not only for the present problem at hand, but also address components critical to long-term success, such as local community livelihoods, awareness, and ecosystem function at the landscape level. A recent realization by those outside of the natural sciences has finally made relevant what we as ecologists were already arguing.  In developing long-term solutions we must prioritize the primary driver of sustainability: ecosystem function.  How we do this however, may be a more difficult question to answer.