Update for October 2000
Developments and Activities within LUCC and IDGEC
IPOs
The LUCC IPO has been opened up at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Funding is guaranteed until March 2003. Executive Officer Helmut Geist took over on the LUCC involvement of the OSC July 2001 and the Newsletter No. 5 publication, after more than a year without any such publication. Science Officer Suzanne Serneels will be working on land degradation and desertification studies. Helmut also gave a presentation at the most recent national IGBP meeting in Potsdam on highlights of LUCC research in Germany - to be promoted for the January national conference and Amsterdam. Neither he nor I could identify German highlights of LUCC science…..you will get a report soon on the „why“ we found none.
Syma Ebbin is the appointed new Executive Officer of the IDGEC IPO. Syma obtained her doctorate from Yale University where she studied co-management institutions and focused her research on salmon management in Washington and Alaska. Her background is interdisciplinary, integrating perspectives from both social and natural sciences in her research. She is now developing a new line of inquiry exploring some of the questions laid out in IDGEC’s Science Plan.She began distributing the PEEZ scoping reports and also filled requests for the IDGEC science plan and CMRA scoping report. External reviews of the PEF scoping report were requested and passed those received onto the scoping team members.
An IDGEC listserver was created (). It intends to link researchers, managers and policy-makers from around the world with an interest in the institutional dimensions of global environmental change. The list functions to distribute IDGEC publications and notices as well as other materials deemed to be of interest to the network. It also acts as a forum for discussion among subscribers, providing them with a means of communicating their research and findings to an audience of colleagues around the world.
Syma attended part of the IGBP/IHDP/WCRP Carbon Workshop in Durham NH. She is currently putting the second edition of IDGEC newsletter together. It should be published sometime before year end. The IPO has updated the website and is looking to hire a webmaster and to revamp the site.
SSC nominations
Tom Veldkamp, Arild Angelsen, Lisa Graumlich, Sharifa Abdulah, Felino Lansigan are approved as new LUCC SSC members by the IHDP-SC. The IGBP-SC will go through the approval process during their officers meeting in November.
It is anticipated to accomplish the official appointment by Mid-December in order to enable the new SSC members participation in the LUCC SSC meeting in January 2001.
Madiodio Niasse, Scott Barrett, Angela Cropper, and Agus Sari were approved and officially invited by the IHDP-SC to join the IDGEC SSC as of November 1, 2000. We are currently waiting for their official letters of acceptance.
Open Science Conference, July 2001
The LUCC parallel session "Putting people into the Earth system" seems to develop well. 3 out of 6 invited speakers have already confirmed (Roger Kasperson, Emilio Moran, Tom Downing). Roger tries to secure funding from his own project. Tom needs partial and Emilio full funding. Rik Leemans parallel session on “Predicting Land-Use Change” doesn’t seem to be very much proceeded yet. B. Turner will give a scientific presentation on “Myths and Realities of Land-Use Change”, day 1: Achievements and Challenges. Oran Young will give a scientific presentation on “The Institutional Challenge of Manageing Biogeochemical Cycles”, scheduled for day 3: Advances in Understanding.
Publications
A LUCC publication on drivers of tropical deforestation is anticipated for this year. It shall be published as a volume of the IHDP Report Series.
Engagement with the Joint Themes
Carbon: Unfortunately the LUCC community was represented at the Integrative Carbon Research Meeting in Durham (16 – 20 Oct.) by one scientist only (D. Ojima). Currently the LUCC IPO with support from the SSC is preparing a statement on the projects interest in the joint initiative on carbon cycle research. Oran Young is a lead person representing the social science community’s engagement. He attended the Durham Meeting and gave a key note lecture on the Human Dimensions Aspects of an Integrative Research on the Global C-Cycle. Yoshiki Yamagata (SSC member) and Granville Sewell attended that meeting as well. Another collaboration on the carbon issue with the IGBP community takes place through the workshop on “Land Use Change and the Terrestrial Carbon Cycle in Asia”. The workshop proposal was prepared and submitted to APN by P. Canadell. The workshop and the networking involved will be a good opportunity to link the Asian community to the Integrated C-Cycle Research Theme. The draft agenda especially facilitates linkages with IDGEC and LUCC. It’s in our interest to also get IT involved. The draft agenda was circulated to Oran and IHDP secretariat for comments and suggestions. It was agreed to also forward it to Pier for his input. The workshop will be held Jan. 29 – Febr. 1, 2001 in Kobe/Japan.
There is a list of carbon research related LUCC endorsements available at IHDP/Initiatives/Carbon/LUCC endorsed_projects
Water: The new SSC member Tom Veldkamp and the LUCC scientist Declan Conway took the lead on the project’s collaboration with this joint research initiative. Declan attended the Water Scoping Meeting in Paris on behalf of the LUCC project.
Peter Sand attended the Scoping Meeting on behalf of IDGEC. In future Paul Mathieu will be the contact-person for the IDGEC-WATER collaboration. He will closly interact with Peter Sand and the new IDGEC SSC member Madiodio Niasse on this issue.
Workshops/other activities
Meeting in the Middle: The challenge of meso-level integration. October 17-20, Ispra/Italy. Organised by LUCC Focus 1 Office. This workshop will be picked up on again by Ron Rindfuss‘ workshop on „Linking patterns of land cover to household data" to be held at the East West Centre, Hawaii, in summer 2001.
LUCC/PAGES collaboration on developing a global database of land-cover history is proceeding: Klein Goldewijk and Ramankutty will lead the efforts to develop the final fast-track database, to be released at the OSM 2001, in Amsterdam.