Complex adaptive systems in ecology and evolution

Mitigating and managing anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems and their services poses a variety of important challenges: modern approaches to understanding such complex adaptive systems and their interactions with human interventions need to account for nonlinear feedbacks, discontinuities and break points, non-equilibrium dynamics, collective phenomena, systemic transitions, behavioral dynamics, as well as multi-level and multi-scale interactions among processes and agents. Ecology is the quintessential systems science, dealing with these challenges in a holistic way. The four projects offered below enable SA-YSSP participants with backgrounds in biology, physics, mathematics, economics, or computer science to become part of exciting developments and topical research at the forefront of this burgeoning field.