Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI)

• Focuses on research of the coupled dynamics of social-ecological systems (SES) and the translation of knowledge into informed decision-making.

• Uses Maine as an R&D “laboratory” to link knowledge to action.

• 5 year NSF EPSCoR grant

Organized around three pressing drivers of landscape change — urbanization, forest ecosystem management, and climate change.

Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI)

Supports a suite of place-based sustainability science research projects related to landscape dynamics (i.e., urbanization, forest management, climate change) in Maine.

Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI)

Investigates solutions to an array of sustainability problems such as renewable energy, water resource management, invasive species.

Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI)

Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI)

Interdisciplinary teams work with stakeholders to maximize the relevance and potential value of research for decision-making.

Maine's Sustainability Solutions Initiative Goals

Facilitate collaborative interdisciplinary research to understand how social, economic, and ecological systems respond to changing demographic, market, biophysical, and political conditions;

Generate and share information among researchers, stakeholders, and decision-makers to support public policies that sustain economic opportunity in concert with preservation of environmental quality;

Explore innovative ways of promoting communication between stakeholders and researchers and delivering educational tools to students and teachers engaged in analysis of sustainability issues in the classroom;

Establish state-wide networks among government agencies, NGOs and the private sector focused on improved management of natural resources and the development of key technology clusters in the Maine economy

SSI data management project objectives and research approach

• Identify data needs and types of data used within the portfolio of SSI projects

• Develop framework for data search, access, archiving

• Provide access to computational resources

• Support data documentation and curation

• Provide a foundation for linking knowledge and data through ontologies

• Enhance and complement the research portfolio

Activities: SSI Data Inventory

• Catalog the breadth and depth of SSI data holdings– Thematic variables: urbanization, forestry, climate change– Spatial and temporal scales– Data types

• Identify data management concerns– Metadata development– Data access and sharing within teams and among

stakeholders– Archiving and storage of data– Restrictions on data access and sharing (IRB)

• Data types collected include– Geospatial- GIS layers and imagery– Surveys and survey data– Model runs– Time series - geochemical, hydrological, land use observations

• Data management methods and needs varied broadly across teams, but some common themes were:– Metadata standards for non-GIS datasets are largely unknown– Limited time and expertise for data documentation– Graduate students as keepers of data-poses challenges to continuity

Inventory Results

Summary points

• So far we have not identified a repository framework that can handle the level of data diversity represented in SSI.

• Metadata resolves to least common denominator: Dublin Core

• Individual researchers and teams approach the processes of urbanization, forest ecosystem management, and climate change with different understandings, research questions, and terminology as do stakeholders and decision makers.

• Core domain knowledge of the project is not codified in an explicit way that lends itself to better team knowledge and data integration

Summary points

Develop knowledge representations that can be computationally processed, shared with stakeholders, or used for knowledge based access to data.

A pathway

Create knowledge representations of the key processes of urbanization, forest ecosystem management, and climate change; their sub-processes; events related to these processes; and semantic connection of process and event knowledge to supporting data sets.

Use the SSI ontology of processes and events to semantically annotate project data sets to make them easier to search and share within and outside

Data Infrastructures

Considered research data sets

How to support stakeholder contributed data, and integrate it

Network of networks

Can we integrate geographically – locally around place

Separated largely thematically

Numerous VGI sites

• How can the lessons learned in individual settings be brought to larger arenas? If certain findings emerge in individual municipalities, how can they be useful for counties or the entire state?

Summary points

Sustainability Challenges:

Produce knowledge and link it to actions that meet human needs while preserving the planet’s support systems.

Investigate and evaluate policies and practices that promote economic development while protecting ecosystem health and fostering community well-being.