Organized Oral Session
Lin Meng
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States
Ana Bento
Indiana University-Bloomington, United States
Robert Dyball
The Australian National University
Canberra, United States
Lin Meng
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States
We are witnessing an unprecedented call to transform human society and rethink the linkages between ecological processes and emerging diseases of human impact. Returning to a pre-pandemic way of life is not really sustainable, so understanding how to transform and adapt by addressing the major challenges between people and nature is paramount. One major revolution the COVID-19 pandemic brought was a data revolution, ecologists now have a plethora of data streams at their disposal. This has been particularly significant to disease and human ecology given the multitude of simultaneous scales at which disease processes occur. The goal of this session is to call for ecologists to leverage this ecological inflection point and take action to reshape the future. Further, we will foster a discussion on how the thoughtful integration of diverse data streams has enabled insights into multifaceted infectious disease systems and to address the conceptual challenges of creating cutting-edge tools to harness the power of these novel data across fields, but also across scales. Specifically, we foresee discussion of several key challenges that arise: (i) developing the appropriate tools to harness information; (ii) integrating heterogeneous sources of data; and finally, (iii) robustly estimating and critically evaluating complex models, (iv)new perspectives on the understanding of feedbacks among social and ecological systems and the need to engage with socio-cultural dimensions, (v) the major challenges that COVID-19 has created for continuing the human-focused work, and our efforts to build momentum for transformative action in Planetary Health. Our session will bring together a diverse set of ecologists who will provide their unique take on how they have gained a broader perspective on the big One Health questions in ecology and how to harness it by integrating novel data. The talks will include different perspectives on these questions, from scientists in research institutes to a mix of junior and senior faculty. Presentations will focus on different systems, spanning various taxa and scales, to foster discussion on general questions that are universal to ecology, identifying actions to bolster social and ecological resilience, and using new knowledge to co-create evidence-based solutions for a more sustainable future, in the “age of data”. We envision the discussion will emphasize holistic views of these challenges and how the explicit consideration of data of seemingly disparate streams, scale, and resolution may improve our understanding of One Health.
Presenting Author: Kathleen C. Weathers – Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Presenting Author: Nita Bharti – Penn State University
Presenting Author: Samantha Ying – The University of California Riverside
Co-author: Samantha Ying – The University of California Riverside
Co-author: Federico Castillo, Ph.D. – University of California, Berkeley
Co-author: Woutrina Smith, DVM, MPVM, Ph.D. – University of california, Davis
Co-author: Martin Smith, Ph.D., Ed.D. – University of California, Davis
Presenting Author: Quan Minh Tran – University of Notre Dame
Co-Author: Alex Perkins – University of Notre Dame
Presenting Author: Chiho Watanabe – Nagasaki University
Presenting Author: Greg Albery – Georgetown University