Telecoupling Framework: Concepts, Applications and Hands-On Exercises with the New Cloud-Based Telecoupling Toolbox

Landscapes across the world are increasingly interconnected, both ecologically and socioeconomically. To understand and manage such complex interconnections, a relatively new integrated framework of telecoupling is proposed (http://www.telecoupling.org). Telecouplings are socioeconomic and ecological interactions between multiple coupled human and natural systems (e.g., landscapes) over distances. They occur during trade, water transfer, payment for ecosystem services, foreign investment, migration, and tourism. They also emerge when information flows, organisms disperse, species invade, and diseases spread. The award-winning framework of telecoupling emphasizes reciprocal cross-scale and cross-border interactions (e.g., feedbacks). Telecouplings have profound implications for landscape sustainability as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. They pose new global challenges and offer exciting new opportunities for the landscape ecology community. In this workshop, we will introduce the telecoupling framework, present applications of the framework, and conduct hands-on exercises with the new Telecoupling GeoApp, a cloud-based application with a large collection of mapping and analysis tools to systematically study. Workshop participants will have an opportunity to apply the framework and web tools to their socio-environmental issues of interest.

Intended Audience: The target audience encompasses attendees at any career stage (e.g. students, postdoctoral scholars, professors, resource managers) and with a variety of interests, such as landscape change, climate change, natural resource policy and governance, biodiversity, ecology, and landscape patterns (e.g. connectivity) and processes (e.g. disturbance, dispersal, migration).

This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device