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Grand Synthesis
Up to Progress report post-NCEAS
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Hi All!
Many apologies for not giving you a report of the NCEAS meeting before now. Once I got back, I was overwhelmed with work that I had been ignoring all semester!
First off, thanks to Danny and Jonathon for doing such a great job representing our theme group at the Grand Synthesis meeting. It was great having you both there.
The meeting in general went very well, I think. All the groups presented their projects and major findings on Tuesday -- you can view the slide presentations on the DGS website in a folder called 'Grand synthesis documents' (#).
On Wednesday, we began the discussion about how to integrate the projects and what the ultimate products of the seminar will be. As we suspected, the scope and content of projects were so variable that it didn't make sense to try and come up with a single synthesis document. Instead, we decided on three primary products.
1) Individual manuscripts to be submitted independently for publication in journals by early/mid fall.
2) Spanish language versions of these manuscripts (focussing on more applied aspects) to be published in CATIE publications (as a special issue?)
3) A book to include chapters from each theme group (modified versions of the journal articles) as well as some integrated analyses within three primary sections (theory & biodiversity, specific services, policy).
We came up with a rough draft of the book proposal (to be submitted to Springer in late summer), which can be viewed here: #
This document contains abstracts from all the theme groups, which is another useful way to see what everyone else did with their projects.
In terms of our group, we will likely work most closely with the Functional Diversity, Mechanisms and Landscapes groups for our section of the book. We discovered that we all had overlapping study sites/data from Central America and Mexico and so we may attempt an integrated analysis to include as the final chapter in our section of the book. This is something that the faculty members will discuss in more detail over the summer.
Also, there was some discussion about exploring some "less-traditional" publications, such as popular magazines/news media, extension and educational literature in an attempt to get the word out. A sub-group will be working on this and you all will get an e-mail in the next few weeks asking if you are interested in participating in this aspect. Jonathon might be able to give you a better summary of this.
I felt that our project was well recieved -- Fabrice specifically mentioned that he liked our approach (of comparing linear habitats to natural habitats using similarity indices). I think, ultimately, it fit in well with the other groups. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of time to discuss each individual project and ours was the last presentation of the day!
In terms of our manuscript, Danny, Jonathon and I came up with some ideas for more analyses that will hopefully increase the value of our contribution. We hope that everyone will continue to stay involved in the process as much as they are able.
To break this up a bit, I will save the details of our project goals for a separate e-mail. Coming soon....
Once again, thanks to everyone for your participation in the course and especially for pulling things together for the NCEAS meeting.
Best,
Kim
p.s. Danny & Jonathon, if you have something to add about the meeting, feel free!
Many apologies for not giving you a report of the NCEAS meeting before now. Once I got back, I was overwhelmed with work that I had been ignoring all semester!
First off, thanks to Danny and Jonathon for doing such a great job representing our theme group at the Grand Synthesis meeting. It was great having you both there.
The meeting in general went very well, I think. All the groups presented their projects and major findings on Tuesday -- you can view the slide presentations on the DGS website in a folder called 'Grand synthesis documents' (#).
On Wednesday, we began the discussion about how to integrate the projects and what the ultimate products of the seminar will be. As we suspected, the scope and content of projects were so variable that it didn't make sense to try and come up with a single synthesis document. Instead, we decided on three primary products.
1) Individual manuscripts to be submitted independently for publication in journals by early/mid fall.
2) Spanish language versions of these manuscripts (focussing on more applied aspects) to be published in CATIE publications (as a special issue?)
3) A book to include chapters from each theme group (modified versions of the journal articles) as well as some integrated analyses within three primary sections (theory & biodiversity, specific services, policy).
We came up with a rough draft of the book proposal (to be submitted to Springer in late summer), which can be viewed here: #
This document contains abstracts from all the theme groups, which is another useful way to see what everyone else did with their projects.
In terms of our group, we will likely work most closely with the Functional Diversity, Mechanisms and Landscapes groups for our section of the book. We discovered that we all had overlapping study sites/data from Central America and Mexico and so we may attempt an integrated analysis to include as the final chapter in our section of the book. This is something that the faculty members will discuss in more detail over the summer.
Also, there was some discussion about exploring some "less-traditional" publications, such as popular magazines/news media, extension and educational literature in an attempt to get the word out. A sub-group will be working on this and you all will get an e-mail in the next few weeks asking if you are interested in participating in this aspect. Jonathon might be able to give you a better summary of this.
I felt that our project was well recieved -- Fabrice specifically mentioned that he liked our approach (of comparing linear habitats to natural habitats using similarity indices). I think, ultimately, it fit in well with the other groups. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of time to discuss each individual project and ours was the last presentation of the day!
In terms of our manuscript, Danny, Jonathon and I came up with some ideas for more analyses that will hopefully increase the value of our contribution. We hope that everyone will continue to stay involved in the process as much as they are able.
To break this up a bit, I will save the details of our project goals for a separate e-mail. Coming soon....
Once again, thanks to everyone for your participation in the course and especially for pulling things together for the NCEAS meeting.
Best,
Kim
p.s. Danny & Jonathon, if you have something to add about the meeting, feel free!