IGBP-PAGES FOCUS 5 PROGRAMME: PAST ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES AND HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS

Global concerns about how to manage terrestrial environments sustainably in the face of climate change, changing land use, population pressure and pollution are expressed in IGBP, IPCC, IHDP and other international agendas. The functioning of the majority of global ecosystems is in part contingent on a significant history of human impact, demanding that integrated strategies for preservation, conservation or sustainable management of ecosystems incorporate an understanding of long term responses to climate and human activities.

Internationally, the role of coordinating research and findings on long term environmental change lies with the IGBP Past Global Changes (PAGES) Core Project. Thus, a new programme Focus 5 "Past Ecosystem Processes and Human-Environment Interactions" was initiated in 2001 in recognition of the need to enhance and coordinate long term perspectives on terrestrial ecosystems that encompass the human dimension.

The Focus 5 programme (http://www.PAGES.unibe.ch/structure/focus5.html) promotes the integrated use of environmental archives (eg. sediments and tree-rings), archaeological data, documented histories (eg. land use inventories) and instrumental records (eg. meteorology, ecosystems) to inform about the sustainable management of environmental systems. Focus 5 is organised under three sub-programmes: Human Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems (HITE); Human Impacts on Lake Ecosystems (LIMPACS); and Land Use and Climate Impacts on Fluvial Systems (LUCIFS). Focus 5 Science Objectives include:

1. to integrate records of past ecosystem processes in studies of human and climate impacts on present and future biogeophysical systems;

2. to identify the nature of synergistic interactions between human activities, climate and terrestrial responses;

3. to identify thresholds and the sensitivity of terrestrial environments to the impacts of human activities and climate acting alone and in combination;

4. to improve the capacity for long term modelling of human-environment interactions.

The presentation provides an overview of Focus 5 objectives, methodologies, and findings from ongoing case-studies in each of the sub-programmes. Future plans for the dissemination of findings to a wide audience include publications based on presentations and discussions at two Focus 5 Gordon Conferences scheduled for 2005 and 2006.