Understanding resilience across the landscape: mapping, modeling, and managing ecosystem services

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Humanity depends on the services provided by ecosystems, such as food, flood control, and places to recreate. Management that attempts to maximize provision of one ecosystem service (ES) may make ecosystems vulnerable to declines in other ES. For this reason, recent studies have called for increased attention to co-managing multiple ES. However, this is impeded by an inadequate understanding of the multiple, non-linear interactions among ES and the slowly changing variables that appear to regulate these interactions. In fact, many uncertainties in ecosystem management are rooted in a lack of fundamental, empirically grounded understanding about the relationship between ecosystem change and the provision of multiple ES. The goal of my research program is to advance theory about the interactions among ES by studying long-term change in two ES (agricultural production and water quality), their drivers (land use and management), and the slowly changing variables that ultimately control system dynamics (soil P concentration and holding capacity).