Key Questions for Working Groups

Theme One: Integrated Modelling and Assessment

1. Definitions of integrate modelling and assessment and key terms in the field. This will include the importance of the inclusion of areas such as the social sciences, as well as the concept of integrated assessment without the modelling component.
   
   
2. Model complexity
• how to reduce real world complexity to a tractable level while still retaining some sense of 'realism'.
• model disaggregation and 'modularisation' as a way forward for increased model flexibility and limiting model complexity.
  
  
3. Model validation versus justification
• difficulties involved for IAM and how to communicate IAM results and validity with those used to 'single discipline' rigorous approaches.
• methods for tracing why different processes are included and excluded from the modelling.
  
  
4. How to communicate the issues, tools, outcomes and suggestions of IAM projects to nonspecialists. This links to the questions about the role of IAM users in the modelling process and the need for approaches to integrate the knowledge of scientists, managers and others for IAM.
• Institutional frameworks and policy environment - problems with these supporting the time and effort required to convey the IAM message.
• The need to better understand the potential role of networks of decision makers and outcomes of planned policy - understanding the divergence of modelled and real world outcomes.
  
  
5. Tools available for integrated 'real world' problems involved in IAM and
   their maturity of development.

Theme Two: Complex, Adaptive and Hierarchical Systems

Question A.
How can we develop the appropriate level of understanding to allow us to model, manage and engineer complex, adaptive, hierarchical ecological and man-made systems?

What are complex systems and how can we characterize complexity?

Which is the role and which are the characteristics of adaptational processes as focal features of CAHS in ecological and human aspects?

What can we learn from the hierarchical structurization of CAHS and how can we apply hierarchy theory and the respective knowledge to the investigation of complexity? Which role does the selected level - of - understanding play for the comprehension of complex entities?

Which is the practical role of hierarchical constraints and how do they affect ecological dynamics in different cases? What is the role of abiotic constraints, such as weather dynamics e.g. in the functioning of aquatic ecosystems?

What are the basic necessities to execute a "macroscopic pattern analysis" and which are the fundamental indicators to describe CAHS as holistic entities?

Which is the potential of a corresponding "deep science approach"?

How can the responding indicators to describe and to evaluate CAHS be quantified in a satisfactory manner?

Which is the potential of modelling methodologies for the understanding and the management of CAHS and how can engineering principles be applied to practical environmental decision making?

What does the insight that human environmental systems are CAHS imply for the idea of predictability and control?

How can models be integrated into participatory assessment studies in an optimal manner?

Which are the basic requirements to realize sustainable developmental strategies for economic, ecological and social (sub)systems and how can these parts be integrated? Which is the specific role of institutions for sustainable management strategies, how do they treat the co-evolution of social and ecological systems and how can these interactions be modeled?

Which role for the improvement of sustainable landscape management strategies can be provided by "eco-principles" and by "ecosophy"?

Question B.
Can we develop models and principles (or even a theory or a pattern of theories)
which could be the basis of a more profound knowledge and understanding of complex, adaptive, hierarchical ecological and human systems?

Which are the scientific roles of models, theoretical principles, patterns of theoretical concepts, and theories to improve the comprehension of CAHS?

Which are the potentials and the limitations of different modelling techniques for the comprehension of CAHS?

Which are the special areas of relevance of the different theoretical approaches to understand CAHS? Which is the specific contribution of information and information theory for the state of CAHS and for their developmental potentials? What information can be gained from thermodynamic analysis of ecological, sociological, and economic systems?

Which roles can extremal principles take in this context and which is their potential for future research strategies? Which are these extremal principles and how are they interrelated? Which ecosystem goal functions or orientors should be recommended for the understanding of CAHS in the ecological context at different levels-of-development? Are the theoretical ideas of goal functions, maturity attributes and orientors acceptable from the point - of - view of empirical research, succession theory and from the ideas of theory of science?

How can knowledge about the functioning of CAHS be utilized optimally to improve the state, the health, and the integrity of the environmental systems?

Theme Three: Ecosystem Services

1. What is the state of the art in making use of the ecosystem services?
2. How can we make a more sustainable use of ecosystem services?
3. What are limiting, hindering and promoting factors?
4. What is the respective role of Ecological Engineering, Ecological Economics, Ecological Modeling and Ecosystem Health?
5. What frame conditions and implementation strategies are needed?
6. What are key problems to be solved in the future?

Theme Five: Ecosystem Health and Human Health

With Rachel Carson's alarm bell Silent Spring, 30 years old and the World Commission on Environment and Development's concept of 'sustainable development' nearly 15 years old, many overt point sources of chemical pollution are under control and mean global life expectancy has risen dramatically. But ecological crises are far from over. Instead they are deepening, becoming more global in nature, and more intractable as human population and impact on the biosphere continue to grow at alarming rates. The Worldwatch Institute and the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and the World Resources Institute all agree that the overall condition of the world's ecosystems is in dangerous decline because of increasing human demands and impacts. Declining ecosystem capacity translates in the short and the long term into declining human health and well-being. The World Health Organization indicates that 25% of all preventable ill-health in the world can be directly attributed to poor environmental quality. Only dramatic, concerted, coordinated human action can hope to avert or slow the downward spiral of irreversible damage to ecosystems, declining carrying capacity of the earth, and loss of options for supporting and improving human quality of life. Although in many areas we have recognized the importance of ecosystem health and the preservation of our resources for sustainable development and for human health, in general, policy makers and politicians still do not integrate these realities into legislation and policies. We are locked into a value system that places short-term gain over sustainability, and denies responsibility for future generations.

Working groups for the theme "Ecosystem Health and Human Health" will focus on the following questions:

• What are the linkages between human health/disease and ecosystem health?
• What are technological, social, political, and economic sources of solutions to the problems?
• What are the priority actions that should be taken to protect, preserve or restore the health of ecosystems and growing human population?
• What are the barriers to effective action?
• What are useful measures, indicators, or metrics of progress?

Session 1. Climate change

Session 2. Agrosystems and food production

Session 3. Declining productive capacity and biodiversity

Session 4. Integration of previous sessions, conclusions, and development of recommendation