An opportunity for ecosystem and biodiversity science
Why the Tansley Working Groups?
The UK research community has great expertise to deliver the many biodiversity and sustainable natural resource management areas of NERC’s Next Generation Science for Planet Earth and for meeting the science goals and societal needs in the 2013 Strategy. This has been reflected in an unprecedented investment in Research Programmes such as:
- Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability
- Valuing Nature Network
- Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation
- Macronutrient Cycles
- Marine Ecosystems
- Human-modified Tropical Forests
- Synthesis Consortium
as well as in the activity in national capability research centres.
The Tansley initiative aims to capitalise on this activity by providing a platform to bring together researchers with different, but related, backgrounds to explore particular issues or ideas, and the emphasis will be on identifying topics for Working Groups that require new combinations of skills, datasets or analyses. We anticipate that Tansley Working Groups will act as a focus drawing together researchers working on similar challenges that are common to several large research programmes. Bringing together working groups containing researchers with different skills, experiences and viewpoints can generate new ideas and approaches to scientific challenges, helping to advance scientific progress on topics that that might otherwise represent significant stumbling blocks. Sharing ideas, approaches and solutions across the different programmes can speed up a common understanding and approach that can help different researchers build on each other’s progress.
Informal enquiries can be addressed to tansley@imperial.ac.uk
