Departmental Seminar by Dr. Terry Chapin, University of Alaska-Fairbanks
Co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability

Title: Earth Stewardship: Sustainability Strategies for a Rapidly Changing Planet

Earth stewardship is an action-oriented framework intended to foster social-ecological sustainability of a rapidly changing planet. Recent developments identify three strategies that make optimal use of current understanding in an environment of inevitable uncertainty and abrupt change: reducing the magnitude of, and exposure and sensitivity to, known stresses; focusing on proactive policies that shape change; and avoiding or escaping unsustainable social-ecological traps. All social-ecological systems are vulnerable to recent and projected changes but have sources of adaptive capacity and resilience that can sustain ecosystem services and human well-being through active ecosystem stewardship. There is urgent need for natural and social scientists to collaborate with practitioners and the public in developing strategies that foster stewardship at all scales. Ecologists can foster earth stewardship at local to global scales through education and outreach that fosters appreciation for and commitment to local and global places, monitoring threats to and progress toward sustainability, improved understanding of threshold behavior of social-ecological systems, and leadership in defining and pursuing sustainability goals. I show from collaborations with Alaska Indigenous residents, who are experiencing substantial climate change, that each of these steps is feasible.

Dr. Chapin is hosted by Dr. Angela Kent.

Terry Chapin is a Professor of Ecology in the Department of Biology and Wildlife at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he joined the faculty in 1973. Most of his research is about the effects of changes in climate and wildfire on Alaskan ecology and rural communities. He is especially interested in ways that communities and agencies can develop options that increase sustainability of ecosystems and human communities over the long term in spite of rapid climatic and social changes. Through his research, he tries to determine how climate, ecology, and subsistence resources are likely to change in the future. This information should enable people to make more informed choices about options for long-term sustainability. Terry teaches classes at the univer-sity and directs the interdisciplinary (IGERT) program in Resilience and Adaptation