Symposium # 20: Global Change in Forests: Interactions Among Biodiversity, Climate and Land Use.

Organized by: A. Hansen and V. Dale.
Wednesday, August 9, 2000
8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Ballroom II - Cliff Lodge

Understanding interactions among climate, land use, and biodiversity is important for predicting and coping with global change. Climate and land use both drive biodiversity. The responses of biodiversity both influence human society and feedback to influence climate and land use. Coping with global change will require manipulation of biodiversity to mitigate negative outcomes. We are examining these issues within the biodiversity committee of the Forest Sector of the National Assessment. The project involves both synthesis of current knowledge and new assessments of the response of biodiversity to future global change. The results are targeted for publication in BioScience and Ecosystems.

The objectives of this symposium are to: 1) Summarize the objectives, approach, and current findings of the National Assessment, 2) Synthesize current knowledge on interactions among climate, land use, and biodiversity, 3) Present state-of-the-science assessments of biodiversity resonse to future climate change, and 4) Outline key implications for future research and for coping with global change.

This symposium is of importance and interest to ESA Members in that it is designed to lay the foundation for advances that will shape research and management on aspects of global change in the next century. One advance involves the integration of climate change and land use in management on aspects of global change in the next century. One advance involves the integration of climate change and land use in studies of global change. These two prongs of global change have been largely studied in isolation. This symposium will explain why these factors need be linked and approaches for achieving this integration. Another advance involves more direct consideration of biodiversity in global change research, with reference to how biodiversity mediates ecosystem response to global change and how biodiversity feeds back to influence climate and land use. We hope that attendees leave the symposium with several new ideas for research questions and management approaches for understanding and coping with global change.