Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
18.1
Introduction
Wadi Araba of Israel and Jordan is a hyper-arid desert in the demographic and
geographic periphery of the two countries. Although the climate is extreme and
characterized by low primary productivity, the region hosts unique biodiversity -
including rare hyper-arid species of conservation importance (Dolev and
Perevolotsky
2004
), one of the earth's northern-most tropical coral reefs, and a major
fl yway for migratory birds between northern Asia and Europe and central and south-
ern Africa. The area is the fi rst stopover for millions of birds migrating from Africa
to Europe in the spring (Frumkin et al.
1995
). Concurrently, both countries are inter-
ested in distributing their rapidly growing populations away from their geographic
core regions and are making great efforts to entice populations to move to these
regions. The region is characterized by rapid economic development in the form
of transportation, trade (Eilat and Aqaba serve as important port cities for each
country) and tourism development. These activities are claiming growing amounts
of land, not only for urban development, but for agriculture, solar power generation,
and large-scale infrastructures including airports, rail networks, and the proposed
Red Sea - Dead Sea conduit.
Into this contentious setting, the Israel Long-term Ecological Research (LTER)
Network made a strategic decision to establish a Long-Term Socio-Ecological
(LTSER) Platform. The LTSER concept is new to the 17-year old Israel LTER
network. Israel was accepted into the International LTER network in 1997 with the
recognition of two research sites in the Negev Desert, which had a history of
ecological research and monitoring. The Israeli sites were grouped with the
(then East) Europe LTER network (Groner and Shachak
2011
). Since then, 11 more
sites have been added to the Israel network, and more recently, two platforms were
added. Until 2009, almost all the research conducted within the Israel LTER
network focused on ecology, biology, hydrology, climatology and other natural
science disciplines. Accordingly, the data base resulting from LTER monitoring
refl ected this disciplinary bias (Dick et al.
2014
).
In 2009, the Israel LTER management committee decided to expand the disci-
plinary foundation of the network to include the social sciences and humanities.
This decision was based on trends in Europe towards inter- and trans-disciplinary
research (Haberl et al.
2006
), and because local scientists adopted the view that the
incorporation of social science into ecological research was crucial for addressing
contemporary conservation challenges. It was decided to establish two LTSER plat-
forms: one based on the fi ve existing LTER sites in the Northern Negev (Orenstein
et al.
2012
), and a second, completely new, platform in Wadi Araba. Concurrent to
the establishment of the Israeli Wadi Araba platform, the new Jordanian LTER
network established a Jordanian platform across the international border.
The LTSER concept evolved within the European LTER network as part of a
broader trend among scientists responding to the realization that global ecological
challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion were
rooted in social and economic dis-function and that the problems must be analyzed
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