Sentinels of Global Change

Sentinels are like canaries in the coal mine: they provide a watchful eye and serve as an early warning system in times of impending danger. Earth and ecosystem scientists have suggested this concept be stretched to include watersheds as sentinels of global change. While intriguing at first, we need to understand what watersheds are watching for, if they are watching for the right things, and if they are signalling warnings at the right time and we must consider if watersheds are universal in their ability to serve as sentinels, or if their usefulness depends on their geographic location (e.g., for catchments to be effective sentinels, must they exist close to a physical limit, like a freezing point for temperature or a wilting point for moisture?) and/or geographic scale (e.g., are first order catchments the best sentinels, or can large drainage basins or wetlands and lakes within the basins be effective sentinels?).

The 2011 Catchment Science Gordon Research Seminar and Conference will critically evaluate whether “sentinels” is a catchy anthropomorphism or a critical concept for catchment scientists. We will search for examples of Sentinels from the Past. Using historical datasets we will peer into the past to examine how watersheds responded to global change. Doing so will help answer what to measure, where to measure it, and if and when systems reach tipping points beyond which they cannot recover. It will also help answer if defining a reference condition from the past is appropriate for managing ecosystems in the present or future. We will explore possibilities of Sentinels for the Future. To predict the consequences of global change, functional traits of watersheds such as memory, synchronicity, resistance, resilience, recovery, adaptability, and transformability can be used to capture and subsume process complexity that occurs within watersheds. The identification of such functional traits allows coherent and reproducible patterns of watersheds processes to be identified - a basis for watershed comparison, classification and process prediction. We will present Breakthroughs in Measuring and Monitoring Global Change. Our ability to predict the consequences of global change on the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of watersheds is a formidable challenge. We will focus on scientific and technological advances in watersheds sciences, the emergence of monitoring networks and strategic observatory zones, and the future of remotely sensed observations. Finally, we will showcase the relevance of Sentinels for Society. There is compelling evidence that global change is affecting ecosystem services from watersheds in many parts of the world. Managing the societal consequences of these changes in ecosystem services is one of the 21st Century’s major challenges to the prosperity and security of the global community. We will explore the realm of socio-ecological systems and the translation of the scientific warnings to societal responses.

Scientists attending this conference are encouraged to share their cutting-edge research - especially as it relates to our selected theme on Sentinels of Global Change. We are excited to introduce our first Gordon-Kenan Research Seminar (GRS) on Catchment Sciences which is a unique forum for graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to present and exchange ideas among peers. The GRS will feature two scientific sessions (selected from submitted abstracts), poster sessions, and a mentorship component focused on “Life after the PhD: How to get a job in catchment sciences”. Immediately following the GRS, the 11th GRC on Catchment Sciences will begin, including oral sessions (speakers selected by invitation), poster sessions, and moderated discussions.