The inaugural symposium explored the state of socio-environmental systems research, recent advances in the field, and the unique challenges and opportunities engendered by the questions and approaches of socio-environmental systems research.
Since opening our doors in 2011, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center has supported 174 team-based synthesis research projects focused on finding solutions to complex environmental problems. In our tenure, we've learned a few lessons about interdisciplinary collaboration along the way...
This toolkit guides synthesis teams on how to communicate research to a variety of audiences.
The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) seeks proposals from highly-qualified graduate students interested in conducting team-based Socio-Environmental Synthesis research (i.e. “Graduate Pursuits”).
GRID-Arendal won the Most Creative Map prize at the ESRI User Conference in Oslo for their Story Map on human dependence on coral reefs.
Mongabay's Elizabeth Devitt recently profiled the research of SESYNC Postdoctoral Fellow, Elizabeth Daut.
•The exotic animal trade is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the US is the world’s leading importer. While the US government is on the alert for well known animal-transmitted diseases, there is no mandatory health surveillance for most animals coming though US ports for commercial distribution.
•Live animal imports could bring new diseases into the US and infect endemic wildlife, with devastating consequences as, for example, was seen with the worldwide exposure of amphibians to Chytrid fungus which resulted in the decline of more than 200 species.
•Elizabeth Daut is drawing on her training as a veterinarian and her extensive experience with wildlife to create a computer model that evaluates the risk of importing infectious diseases to the US via the exotic animal trade.
•Predictions produced by her model could help prioritize which species and exporting countries might warrant extra attention at ports of entry. With a better understanding of disease risks, government agencies could improve surveillance and develop better infectious disease prevention plans.
The legal commercial exotic animal trade is a booming enterprise that ships ornamental fish, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians around the world. These pets, livestock and other animals can carry unexpected infectious diseases from their homelands. If these non-native species escape or are released to the wild, they can create epidemics among susceptible endemic wildlife.
Four US agencies oversee live animal imports, but there is currently no systematic screening for disease in most live animal imports. The majority of animals processed through American ports for the pet industry fall under the aegis of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which has no authority to conduct health inspections. Livestock imports are regulated by the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), with oversight by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection. Species known to carry certain diseases (rabies in dogs, or tuberculosis in monkeys, for example) are monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to a 2010 report from the US Government Accountability Office, a lack of interagency collaboration creates gaps in health surveillance that could leave native wildlife and people exposed to disease. These risks could potentially be enormous. A single fungal disease, Chytrid, for example, devastated more than 200 amphibian species worldwide.
A related pathogen, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, originating with the Asian salamander trade, wreaked similar havoc on native populations in the Netherlands and Belgium. If this fungus gains a foothold in the US — a salamander biodiversity hotspot — experts fear entire species could be wiped out.
“There’s been a lot of attention focused on the human health risks from wildlife disease,” says veterinarian Elizabeth Daut. “While that’s obviously important, nobody is really talking about the risks these exotic imports pose for wildlife.”
Daut is delving into the dynamics and consequences of the spread of infectious diseases by the exotic pet trade, through a post-doctoral project with the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland.
She is using US Department of Agriculture methodology as part of the basis for her model — the agency routinely inspects plants from other countries and also helps improve plant nursery practices in nations at risk for exporting pathogens. Daut is developing a computer algorithm to predict which countries are at the highest risk of exporting infectious diseases through birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.
Read the full interview at Mongabay.
For more on the topic:
Daut EF, Lahodny G Jr, Peterson MJ, Ivanek R. (2016) Interacting Effects of Newcastle Disease Transmission and Illegal Trade on a Wild Population of White-Winged Parakeets in Peru: A Modeling Approach. PLoS ONE, Vol. 11.
GAO. LIVE ANIMAL IMPORTS, Agencies Need Better Collaboration to Reduce the Risk of Animal-Related Diseases. GAO-11-9 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 8, 2010).
Kolby JE. (2014) Presence of the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in native amphibians exported from Madagascar. PLoS ONE. Vol. 9.
Reporting to the Executive Director, the Associate Director for Research will provide support for interdisciplinary synthesis research teams conducting long-term (2-year) projects and other participants who come to the Center for single workshops and individual scholarship. He/she will provide scientific support during the development and implementation of projects.
This month Dr. Ken Conca will join the SESYNC team as a fellow on sabbatical from his home institution, American University’s School of International Service, where he is a professor of International Relations. He will spend much of his time on an independent sabbatical project that investigates climate change, water, and the social construction of risk.
Ecological restoration is seen as a key tool for building back biodiversity and resilience in ecosystems that have been disturbed. But new research found that even if complete ecosystem recovery is reached, disturbed ecosystems typically incur decades of lost biodiversity and ecosystem function such as carbon and nitrogen cycling.
