CONSERVATION PALEOBIOLOGY IN THE COMING DECADES

Humans have become a major force altering the Earth and its biota -- we now live in the Anthropocene. A major challenge for the future is finding ways to ameliorate human impacts on biodiversity, and to restore and sustain the ecosystem services on which we depend. In order to explore how best to position the emerging field of Conservation Paleobiology to address these problems, we organized an NSF-funded workshop at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY (June 3-5, 2011). Conservation Paleobiology is the application of geohistorical records to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Few geoscience disciplines can promise such rapid translation of basic research in theory, modeling, and other techniques into knowledge and approaches that can be used to address environmental problems, as conservation paleobiology. Geohistorical data and analyses open the door for a broad-based science of biological vulnerability and resilience that speaks directly to societal concerns, such as the stability of biogeochemical cycles, the design of biological reserves, the effects of biological change on ecosystem services, and the direct and indirect consequences of biological invasions and extinctions.

Nineteen scientists with diverse backgrounds in the geological and biological sciences attended the workshop. Participants recommended that NSF develop a visionary, broadly-based funding program to support the emerging discipline of conservation paleobiology. Such an effort will require an explicit commitment to innovative and genuinely interdisciplinary research by agencies and individuals. It will require investments in infrastructure to support collaborations between earth scientists and biologists. It will also require new educational and outreach opportunities for early career earth scientists and biologists that will encourage them to bridge traditional disciplines. A full list of recommendations of workshop participants is available online at: www.conservationpaleobiology.org. This initiative has promise to change the way we address challenges as a community, rather than as individual researchers, thus establishing the emerging field of conservation paleobiology as interdisciplinary at the outset.