Collaborative Research: Ecological Circuitry Collaboratory

至少30年来，人们一直在呼吁培养具有更高定量技能的生态学家，以及能够在小组中工作以解决复杂环境问题的科学家。 生态回路合作实验室（ECC）是生态科学中生态学家和理论家之间“闭合回路”的努力。 ECC由先前由NSF生态系统研究和生态学计划资助的七名研究人员及其学生组成，他们的项目研究生态系统结构和功能之间的关系。ECC的学生正在学习建立，使用和理解模型，同时在实地和实验室为基础的实证科学实践中有坚实的基础。 建模培训来自学生的家庭机构和一系列小组研讨会。 一个主要的努力一直是开发一个群体建模项目，以发展建模和群体互动技能。该项目的科学价值来自七个新颖而重要的研究生研究项目的完成。 更广泛的影响将出现作为ECC解决有关研究，教育，综合，预测和群体动力学在环境科学之间的联系的关键问题。

For at least three decades there has been a call for training ecologists with greater quantitative skills and for scientists that are capable of working in groups to solve complex environmental problems. The Ecological Circuitry Collaboratory (ECC) is an effort to "close the circuit" between empiricists and theoreticians in the ecological sciences. The ECC consists of a set of seven investigators previously funded by the NSF Ecosystem Studies and Ecology programs, and their students, whose projects study the relationship between ecosystem structure and function. Students in the ECC are learning to build, use, and understand models while at the same time have firm grounding in the practices of field- and lab-based empirical science. Training in modeling comes from students' home institutions and from a series of group workshops. A major effort has been the development of a group modeling project to develop both modeling and group interaction skills.The scientific merit of the project comes from the completion of seven novel and important graduate student research projects. The broader impacts will emerge as the ECC addresses critical questions about links between research, education, synthesis, prediction and group dynamics in environmental science.