Draft Minutes of the Expert Workshop on the new Global Land Project
25 March, 2004, Bonn, Germany
9:00 – 16:30
Table of Contents:
Round of Introduction of Participants 1
Pre-Lunch Session: Questions and Discussion about the Science Plan 6
After-Lunch Session: Discussion about Key Concepts and Priorities 8
Round of Introduction of Participants
(background, research and motivation to interact with GLP)
Emilio Moran is a social anthropologist with a background in Environmental Sciences and Geography; works on people and the land in Amazonia as well as population in a broad sense with a special interest in projects on demography and land use decision-making, modeling, etc.
Dennis Ojima is ecosystem scientist with a focus on ecosystem modeling and biogeochemistry. He worked on the century and Daicent models and aims at a better integration of human dimensions in understanding the ecosystem including greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon sequestration as well as their feedback into societal and policy relevant issues.
Lex Bouwman is part of the team that developed the integrated IMAGE model to assess the global environment. His research is on agricultural production systems including European scenarios for trade and economic development as well as the integration of global climate models and climate variability impact on agricultural and natural systems. He currently works on the integration of a global climate model to integrate natural system and agricultural production system (both livestock and crop system) and look at nutrient systems and cycles. A regional focus is in China which shows that solutions to mitigate nitrification tend to be much more social and economic than technical. Partners are FAO (projections for 2030); UNESCO oceanographic committee; Max Plank institute; Wageningen University; Kassel University; and Theme 2 and 3 of the Science Plan would be particularly interesting.
Carlos Machado: works in the team of Nelson Lourenço on management of natural resources associated with territorial dynamics and the consequences of resource use. Co-ordinates the activities of nine universities incorporating social and natural sciences to try to understand the management of land-use systems and the decision making processes of the people: Study driving forces and how do people react to these forces (adaptation) and their consequences on ecosystems; Themes 1 & 2
Jorg Priess: Works on regional land use change modeling and shifted to regional scale recently. Nutrient cycling in the tropics. Long term project in Niger about stability of rainforest margins. Interdisciplinary group working in Sulawesi/Indonesia (started with Paul Vlek) where their group provides integrated land-use component. Aims to integrate models and scenarios for sustainability; human and biophysical integration. Theme 1.4 would be interesting as well as part of theme 3; informal collaboration with Dennis using DAICENT;
(he mentioned EspON meeting day before trying to harmonize data and methodologies.)
Joe Alcamo: Director of Center for Environmental Systems Research at Kassel University with three groups: 1) integrated modeling, e.g. Indonesia and Germany (Hessen); 2) global model of land cover (LandShift); electronic database of irrigated uses (location and water use); motivation to collaborate: framework is great and really motivating. As a member of LUCC he can say there is a lot of unfinished business. Priority areas are quantification of land use and cover at the global scale (where virtually no group is working); reporting on the results of various scenarios and quantification of products (what is the future of land-cover?). Agent-based models have great potential as well as integrated models. Research challenges of Kassel: there is a mass of regional studies and results of social scientists, geographers, economists, anthropologies that have not at all found their way into our models. Land-cover process on global scale need to be linked to regional modelling. There is to many global drivers taken into account inconsistently by regional models and that would need harmonization. It is also time to take the plunge to link land cover processes with water processes - we can stop guessing where irrigated areas will be in the future and start taking educated estimates/prognoses; There is some obvious overlap between the land project with the GWSP and the LOICZ project.
Patrick Bourgeron: his personal expertise is in integrated ecological assessment (e.g. Columbia River Basin) and problems of cross-cut integration of socio-economic with biophysical variables. He coordinates a long-term LTER-ILTER collaboration with sub-committees on US urban ecosystems; Zone Atelier with Sander van der Leeuw. Proposal for urban-rural gradient analysis in LTER under Biocomplexity. Interest how to manage and facilitate regime change of knowledge based systems.
Ulla Corzelius: Represents the group of professor Menz, who has several projects fitting into GLP. IMPETUS is and integrated project for freshwater management in Benin. He is also involved in the GLOWA Volta project and the ACACIA project dealing with vulnerability of landscape. Leader of a research group remote sensing and land-scape mapping, including modelling of urban gowth. Regional focus in South Africa and Namibia; IMPETUS fresh water works in Benin and Morocco.
Matthias Braun: remote sensing of land use and land cover change; standardization-harmonization. Education of students of geography and agricultural disciplines. Just completed a state wide inventory of Land-cover change. Coordination of the European working group of remote sensing institutes and special interest is to link the remote sensing community to GLP
Fridolin Krausmann: Socio-economic material and energy flows (LUCC endorsed project): socio economic systems seen like biophysical metabolisms with throughput of matter and energy as an analytical framework; Theorybased approach to link socio-economic system to natural processes. Longterm perspective to be used for coupled models on land-use change. Can be applied to food demand, consumption, multi-scale linkages and agent-based models. Trying to link to land use change; series of projects with long term perspective; transition from biomass to fossil fuel base is reflected in land use change; coupled models based on energy, consumption, trade, multi-scale perspective; global matter exchange processes (scalar dynamics); agent-based models; European LTER implementation of transition from ecological to social domains; Central European (former Austro-Hungarian Empire countries) - how different social-economic and political frameworks impact land use and cover change; European statistical material flow data. Motivation: glad with the integration in the LUCC project because it is good to contribute to a broader frame and get the feedback. More focus on theme one and three.
John Ingram: Background in agroecology, building on to expand into other areas and looking for collaborations between GECAFS and Land (more detailed presentation later that day).
John Porter: Formerly head of Focus 3 of GCTE. Went down with the ship in Mexico. Works on commodity-based simulation modeling and Ecosystem services connected with agroecosystems. Provide biophysical background to much of the land-use change. Interested how to develop argo-ecosystem that are multifunctional. Finds the Energy and material flow model very interesting to be applied to the ecosystem goods and services. Thinks a lot about the relation between ecological systems and economic systems. If trade is not a 0-sum game, it might lead to win-win situations. If ecology a 0-sum game we need to worry because the tension between economic systems and ecological systems as it might hold the key to resource depletion.
Peter Mollinga: Hydrological engineer by training he is now particularly interested in the interdisciplinary work. Trained as an agricultural engineer at Wageningen, now doing social dynamics at ZEF; regional focus in Uzbekistan and Ghana/Burkina Faso; He finds the scale of the project problematic as we need to be modest about what we can do. It is already overwhelming to take on at a regional scale (the danger of arrogance quite real). Just completed a World Bank study on integrated approach to drainage - land and not water management (framework comparable to that of the Land project, but more policy context - how to organize multi-stakeholder decision-making/planning process to assess tradeoffs)
Christoph Müller: Bios-Ex is concerned with the interaction of the human and natural system (lifestyles). Land use module around LPJ DGVM (magpie) driven by external demand for agricultural commodities constrained by process and suitability and resources - goal is to develop dynamics link between LPG and something else using this Magpie Rather young working group “with more visions than achievements”, but concerned with the drivers and the feedbacks of land-use changes. Exchange of data is a crucial issue for the modelling efforts. Open for co-operation.
Matthias Ludeke: Theoretical physics, global ecological modeling; PIK coupled man and environment modeling with land-use shift. Two methodological paradigms: pattern identification (typical cause-effect relations/clusters later interactions) syndrome concept, but also applied to look for typical situations of land system change; should be possible to include qualitative information; generalization of case studies by qualitative modeling; land use projects: 1) smallholders in NE Brazil: decision module linked with resource dynamics = 4 typical land use situations and their successional dynamics for prediction and vulnerability to shocks and droughts and policy interventions 2) urban sprawl in Europe: comparative study of 7 European agglomerations undergoing sprawling behavior. Theme 3 quite interesting - questions raised of great interest on integration and uncertainty.
Tom Veldkamp: Wageningen and LUCC; soil science and geography; landscape, but also continental and local scale; project in Africa; SE Asia and more recently Europe; feedbacks - modeling perceptions; at the moment given the uncertainty, mostly we are producing noise; when you couple you are mainly producing errors; therefore he advocates realistic modesty.
Challenging part of the land science plan is the integration to get the dynamic feedbacks between theme one and two going. That requires not the coupling of models but thinking of new models with new questions, new concepts and new data. We need to think of new projects instead of linking old approaches.
Anette Reenberg: Agricultural geographer; Coordinating an integrated project (SEREIN) on sustainable NRM in the Sahel including all kinds of disciplines and acquired some experience in the difficulties of interdisciplinary integration. Part of the research in her department: LUCC endorsed project to shape the land-use data and results into LUCC vision. Worked on regional studies but has taken advantage of data on a larger scale and can contribute to Land with linking regional to global scale data. Remote sensing and GIS; soil science; environmental history; Bottom-up approach in developing countries in SS Africa and SE Asia; interested to carry on from LUCC to Land.
Eric Craswell: EO GWSP just opened IPO here at ZEF; couldn’t find the word water very often in the Land document; GWSP Activity 1.2 “Land cover changes and the global water system”.
GWSP has a broad definition of “water system” and has clearly a very close relation to land management and land use.
Debra Meyer-Wefering: IHDP liaison to LUCC. Please take advantage of our network of 77 National Committees.
Richard Dikau: PAGES-Lucifs representative (focus 5); rebuilding/reactivating the program; reconstructing sediment fluxes 7000 - 9000 years e.g. Rhine catchment; fluvial system responses to changes in climate and land use (challenge to separate); controls on water and sediment fluxes in regions, globally; spatial and temporal variability; long term processes effects presently; water fluxes and GEC in general; Kates et al 1993 modes and characteristics of regional environmental changes e.g. industrial regions; developing/rapid industrialization; pioneer settlement; finding conception, maybe models, where we can explain in these different regions how sediment is mobilized at the slopes and transported to the ocean through the fluvial system; very long time lags between initial mobilization and final entrance into the oceans. Especially interesting in the light of emerging properties especially if you talk about very large systems. There are a lot of interesting topics to collaborate and he would like to discuss how important it would be to work on these issues.
Paul Vlek: Director, ZEF; “sort of an older version of Tom Veldkamp”. Sort of an older version of Tom Veldkamp. ZEF is a huge experiement in integration and interdisciplinarity and he learned that it is good to start a new institute all over instead of merging old departments. ZEF has a strong ecological mandate: 4 projects: 1) Eastern Amazon - the forest as a system; 2) west Africa - water and climate variability; 3) Uzbekistan desertification; 4) Ethiopia biodiversity and coffee. Research found that many of these issues in the end has a strong connection to land-use issues and land-management. Though biodiversity was a whole new thing, it turned out that coffee diversity was dependent on forest, which was dependent on management, which immigrants didn’t understand, so they ended up looking at land again; same thing in the Volta - thought they were looking at water, it turned out to be land use again. Misery likes company as the integration and coupling are not so easy. We are all trying to get a grip around these coupled systems and struggle very much. Land is a very ambitious document and there needs to be a great process of prioritisation to make it manageable. This includes pooling resources and focusing and taking the document a step forward.
Bill McConnell: LUCC focus 1 officer, worked on meta-analyses of key peer reviewed literature for LUCC and links them now to much more detailed variables and regional studies of the community. Land-cover classification system (not perfect but the best system they found out there). Will certainly undergo modification.
Sander van der Leeuw: national level co-ordinator of a new CNRS programme in France on society and the environment; a bit like US LTER but with much better integration of social and ecosystem dynamics; part of European project to start up later this year ALTERNET. To bring about integration we need to base research in different regions with a much stronger socio-economic component to it and force people to work together and integrate. This includes questioning our conceived world views and building trust. Chairing Dept. of Anthropolgy at ASU with specific mandate to transform school into an social science institute focussing on sustainability and socio-environment system. Interested in transition between rural and urban societies.
Gregor Laumann: works for the IHDP and co-ordinates the Land and urbanization activities. Organizer of the workshop.
Pre-Lunch Session: Questions and Discussion about the Science Plan
After the introduction John Ingram gave a short presentation on the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems project (GECAFS) as an example of a joint project of different programmes within the Earth System Science Partnership (ESS-P).