About Us

Mission:

The BCDL Network is an NSF funded research coordination network that is dedicated to fostering an interdisciplinary program of collaboration. This program of collaboration is directed towards the coordination of research in ecology, economics, policy, land-use, and operations research to catalyze the development of an interdisciplinary framework for biodiversity conservation. The BCDL Network will serve as the research coordinating hub for these disciplines in advancing the general principles of biodiversity conservation in a dynamic and uncertain world.

Goals:

Over a 5-year period, the BCDL network will improve the interdisciplinary foundation for understanding and conserving biodiversity in dynamic landscapes by:

1. Identifying important gaps in theory, data, and methods that limit our ability to design and implement new biological reserve networks and anticipate future patterns of habitat distribution in human-dominated landscapes;
2. Encouraging and expanding communication, collaboration, and integration among ecologists, economists, geographers, and operations research scientists;
3. Coordinating the development of new tools and methods that link ecological, economic, and land-use change dynamics and incorporate key uncertainties into conservation decisions;
4. Developing a successful clearing house for tools, successful case studies, papers, educational opportunities, and other resources needed to advance the scientific basis for biodiversity conservation planning and decisions; and
5. Training a cadre of graduate students and early career scientists in quantitative methods and integrated interdisciplinary methods relevant to understanding and conserving complex ecological systems within a dynamic framework.

Activities:

The BCDL network will accomplish its goals through:

1. An interdisciplinary steering committee comprising scientists from academia and nongovernmental organizations with expertise in ecology, economics, land-use modeling, decision theory, and uncertainty analysis;
2. A series of interdisciplinary Working Group meetings that will catalyze interdisciplinary communication, promote the diffusion of ideas and technologies between disciplines, and encourage new collaborations;
3. A series of synthetic papers with interdisciplinary authorship that will change the way scientists and policy makers think about conservation planning and make conservation investment decisions;
4. Web-based interdisciplinary Learning Resources targeted at upper division undergraduates, Masters level graduate students, and conservation practioners and policy makers;
5. Travel support for graduate students for exchange visits to learn new methods and tools from outside their primary disciplinary expertise;
6. Interdisciplinary workshops and symposia at annual meetings of professional societies; and
7. A Virtual Community to extend the impacts of the Network beyond those who are able to participate through meetings.

Contact:

Sandy Andelman, Primary Investigator and Steering Committee Chair

Heather Evans, Assistant Coordinator

Related Sites:

Bio.M.E.R.G.E.

Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International

Urban Ecology and Long-Term Ecological (LTER) Network

The Resilience Alliance

NSF Support:

The B.C.D.L. Network is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number ______. Findings, opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.