Classical ecological approaches could be caricatured as focusing on long term dynamics of ecological processes in environments that are not changing in a directional way with limited human interference. Despite classic work, beginning with views that communities were always changing and not reaching steady states, more recent work on impacts of climate change, and work on ecosystem management and management of renewable resources, much more work is needed to develop the underlying theory to deal with three big questions that arise from changing each of the three paradigms indicated. 1) What are the dynamics of ecological systems on ecologically realistic time scales? 2) How do populations and ecosystems change in response to a continually changing environment? 3) What is the proper way to manage ecosystems?
Results/Conclusions
Naturally, the answers and approaches to these three challenges are intertwined. However, in all cases, new mathematical approaches and new ways of integrating empirical and theoretical work are needed. New mathematical approaches as well as new ways of gathering and interpreting data, and providing new ways of managing natural systems are all part of the solution. Recent progress has been made in developing approaches for dealing with dynamics on intermediate time scales, on dealing with systems where explicit dependence on time is included, and on using new approaches to manage complex systems. I will present both general results, and results applied to specific systems.