Cary Conferences | Goals | Schedule | Participants | Management | Definitions
The conference will have four main goals:
- Advance conceptual understanding of when and how spatial heterogeneity matters for ecosystem processes and functions
- Define a common agenda for future research on the influences of spatial heterogeneity on the functioning of ecosystems
- Enhance communication among sub-disciplines that address functional aspects of spatial heterogeneity in ecology
- Produce an edited book that summarizes the status of our understanding of the influences of spatial heterogeneity on the functioning of ecosystems and the future prospects for research on this topic
Rationale
Cary Conferences have become an important forum for intensive discussion of challenging issues at the forefront of ecology and ecosystem science. The Tenth Cary Conference, to be held April 29-May 1, 2003, is titled "Ecosystem Function in Heterogeneous Landscapes" and will address how interactions among ecosystems affect the functioning of individual ecosystems and the larger landscape. As in all past Cary Conferences, we will bring together a highly diverse group of participants for three days of invited talks and focused discussion. A hallmark of all of the Cary Conferences has been an emphasis on topics that can help unify and advance the field, as opposed to more narrowly defined issues within a sub-discipline.
The ecosystem concept has been a powerful tool in ecology, allowing investigators to use the quantitative and rigorous laws of conservation of mass and energy in analysis of entire ecological systems. This approach has enhanced our ability to model, manipulate and predict responses of complex ecosystems. Ecosystem boundaries are arbitrarily set to best answer the question posed, with the drawing of boundaries serving to isolate the ecosystem from its surroundings so that fluxes and mass balances can be quantified. Yet, in reality, all ecosystems are open, exchanging matter, energy, information and organisms with their surroundings. This openness means that ecosystems that are defined as spatially separate can, in fact, affect one another. Interaction between adjacent ecosystems is not a new concept in ecology, and a number of ecological disciplines have focused intensively on interactions of adjacent ecosystems. Good examples of this are interactions between surface waters (streams and lakes) and adjacent terrestrial ecosystems, coastal oceans and estuaries, and upland and riparian forests. Nonetheless, more general consideration of the functional consequences of the spatial configuration of ecosystems within landscapes is a subject that has been relatively unexplored by ecosystem ecologists. This subject is becoming increasingly important as ecosystem ecologists are being asked provide information on environmental problems at larger and larger spatial scales, from local to regional to global. Fundamentally, the problem of scaling up from the responses of individual ecosystems to larger spatial scales depends upon how we conceptualize heterogeneity in a landscape comprised of multiple, potentially interacting ecosystems.
Our principal objective in the proposed conference is to bring together a diverse group of ecologists and representatives from other disciplines to consider these issues by examining specific ecosystems and landscapes and extracting general patterns from the comparison. The format of the conference will promote broad thinking and in-depth discussion in plenary sessions, discussion groups and one-on-one interactions among individuals. In addition to the sharing of approaches and ideas among conference participants, we would like this conference to assess the state of the science and articulate a research agenda that can help guide the field into the future.