Prospects for the Development of Integrated Regional Models

Abstract

The primary motivation for this book was the perception that the scale of human-accelerated environmental change necessitates conceptual and mathematical models of regional scope. Current modeling of human and environmental change has been discipline specific (physical, ecological, social) and generally focused at the individual, ecosystem or global scale. Models to integrate physical, ecological and social systems will be necessary to solve critical environmental problems. Currently, it is not clear how to facilitate such an integrated activity, but it was perceived that an initial step was to integrate the different disciplinary communities with their characteristically different focus on scales and processes and divergent vocabularies. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together people from different disciplines to inform scientists about the current state of knowledge about processes operating at a variety of scales, including regions, explore mechanisms by which scientists from different disciplines can work together to advance their collective knowledge of critical processes, and to improve both mathematical and conceptual models within and bridging their disciplines, identify steps necessary to move toward the development of integrated regional models (IRMs) that represent linkages across ecological, human and physical systems and identify the data requirements necessary to do successful integrated regional modeling. A major outcome of successful integrated regional modeling would be improved decisionmaking and management applications.