Earth Stewardship, Socioecosystems, the Need for a Transdisciplinary Approach and the Role of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 213

Chapter 14
Earth Stewardship, Socioecosystems, the Need
for a Transdisciplinary Approach and the Role
of the International Long Term Ecological
Research Network (ILTER)
Manuel Maass and Miguel Equihua
Abstract The way we see ourselves and understand the world we live in guides and
determines the types of solutions we are designing and implementing to deal with
our global change problems. System thinking is helping us to recognize humanity
as complex, self-organized, multi-level, and highly integrated socio-bio-physical
entities that we refer to as socioecosystems. This new ontological paradigm requires
new epistemological tools, and transdisciplinary research is inducing changes in
different aspects of our scientifi c endeavor, including: the philosophical approach
we use to observe our world; the level of commitment we put in our scientifi c work;
the extent and scope we envision in our research goals; the geographical scale and
context in which we focus our case-studies; the type of collaboration we engage in
with other scientists; and the institutional arrangements we construct to accomplish
our research efforts. The International Long Term Ecological Research Network
(ILTER) includes national-level networks of scientists engaged and committed to
conducting long-term and site-based ecological and socio-economic research and
monitoring, with a strong interest in capacity building. ILTER members have exper-
tise in the collection, management, and analysis of long-term environmental data
and, together, they are responsible for creating and maintaining a large number of
unique long-term datasets. ILTER has been a natural partner for global initiatives
dealing with environmental issues, and many members of its community have been
participating in these international programs. We should not underestimate the
urgency, nor the level of commitment, required to foster worldwide socioecosystem
research with a transdisciplinary approach, which are essential for the success of the
sustainable Earth Stewardship initiative.