Dr. Louise Jackson
Land, Air and Water Resources
One Shields Ave
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
tel: +01 530-754-9116
email: lejackson@ucdavis.edu
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admin@agrobiodiversity2008.com
Date: April 7, 2008
Time: 8:15-3:30
Location: 3001 PES
A symposium and workshop was held at the University of California at Davis from April 7-11, 2008, on integrative approaches for studying biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. This was a meeting of the DIVERSITAS agroBIODIVERSITY network http://www.diversitas-international.org/.
Integrative approaches and tools for quantifying biodiversity, ecosystem services, and social contexts for development of sustainable land use practices is the main theme. The goal is to combine ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’ approaches, so that research on landscape processes is combined with mechanistic understanding of localized ecosystem functions. Conceptual models on productivity/biodiversity/livelihoods relationships were presented within a set of international sites where scientists have joined local stakeholders in innovation toward biodiversity-friendly sustainable agriculture, based on concerns about current trends toward agricultural intensification and degradation of environmental quality. This involves an ecosystem approach in which biophysical (e.g., ecology, soil science) and social sciences (e.g., economics, anthropology) together provide understanding of the spectrum of patterns and processes that define certain kinds of systems, including their ecological and economic functions and services.
The workshop is supported by BESTnet, http://www.ecoservices.asu.edu/bestnet/, an NSF-supported Research Coordinating Network. BESTNet aims to bring the benefits of this new international, interdisciplinary research on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being to research students in US universities, through a set of networked research and research training activities. Additional funding was from DIVERSITAS, the University of California at Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the University of California Agricultural Sustainability Institute, and the Kearney Foundation of Soil Science.