IFF Social Ecology e-Newsletter No. 6 – March 2004

+ Upcoming Events:
– Gordon Conference on Industrial Ecology 2004
– Public Social Ecology Lecture by Stephen Bunker:
Transport innovations in relation to extractive economies in Latin America
+ Spring Semester 04:
– Course information online
+ Ökologische Orientierungen
– Ecological Dimensions of the Population Debate
+ Upcoming projects:
– MATISSE
– PartízipA
– AlterNet
+ Project & Conference Reports:
– LAND Open Science Conference, Morelia, Mexico
+ Publications:
– Land Use and Sustainability Indicators
(Haberl, Wackernagel, Wrbka 2003)
+ IFF Library highlights:
– Multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems
(Giampietro 2004)
– Genes, Memes and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution
(Shennan 2002)
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Upcoming Events

Gordon Conference 2004
Univ. Prof. Marina Fischer-Kowalski will chair the forthcoming Gordon Conference on Industrial
Ecology, to be held at Oxford, UK, from August 1-6, 2004. The Gordon Research Conferences were
initiated by Dr. Neil E. Gordon in the late 1920s to promote discussion and the free exchange of ideas
at the frontiers of research in the biological, chemical and physical sciences. Prominent scientists with
common professional interests come together for a full week of intense discussion and examination of
the most advanced aspects of their field. The theme of the 2004 conference is long-term major
technological change. Participation in a Gordon conference is by invitation only.
For further information see http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/indust.htm
Dates: August 1-6, 2004
Location: Oxford, United Kingdom

Public Social Ecology Lecture by Stephen Bunker:
Transport innovations in relation to extractive economies in Latin America
We are very proud to announce that Prof. Stephen Bunker will hold a lecture at the IFF on the topic of
“Transport innovations in relation to extractive economies in Latin America.”
Stephen Bunker teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His current work
involves the growing material, energetic, technological, political, and financial inequalities between the
rapidly expanding industrial economies of the world and the extractive economies that deplete
themselves while providing the raw materials the industrial economies require.
Date: March 17, 2004, 6-8 p.m.
Location: IFF, Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Vienna
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Spring Semester 04

Course information online:
This spring our institute will again offer a wide variety of courses in the field of social ecology.
Detailed information can be found on our website: http://www.iff.ac.at/socec/lehre/lehre_aktuell.php
For further information please contact nina [dot] eisenmenger [at] uni-klu [dot] ac [dot] at
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Ökologische Orientierungen

Ecological Dimensions of the Population Debate
“Ökologische Orientierungen” for the spring semester 2004 will take place as a block seminar from
June 3-5. The theme for this seminar is “Ecological Dimensions of the Population Debate” and it is
open to students and professionals alike. The seminar is organised by Univ. Prof. Marina Fischer-
Kowalski and Dr. Simron Jit Singh, with Univ. Prof. Heinz Fassmann and Dr. Ortrun Veichtlbauer as
guest speakers.
Dates: June 3-5, 2004
Location: TBA (in the region of Rax/Prein)
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Upcoming projects

MATISSE
“Methods and Tools for Integrated Sustainability Assessment”
Social Ecology figures as one of the core partners in one of the European Union’s “Integrated
Projects,” designed as new research policy instruments to better integrate the European Research
area. MATISSE is one of the three projects in the area of Global Change and Ecosystems VIII
(Developing tools for integrated sustainability assessment) to pass the first stage of the selection
process. So we now cross our fingers that we will have the chance to participate in an exciting 4-year
collaborative exercise with some of Europe’s highest profile climate change and integrated
assessment institutions.

AlterNet
“A Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network”
ALTERNet is a Network of Excellence (NoE) funded by the EU’s 6th Framework Programme. The NoE
is expected to start in April 2004 and will run for 5 years. The project will develop durable integration of
long-term ecosystem, biodiversity, and socio-economic research capacity at the European level. It
involves 24 partners from 17 European countries. ALTER-Net will develop integrated research
agendas focussing on priority policy issues through:
– an integration of national centres of excellence in biodiversity research and social science,
– an integration of environmental and socio-economic approaches,
– the development of multi-functional long-term ecosystem research platforms,
– partnerships between research scientists, science communicators and visitor-centres
– development of a science-policy link
– a framework for data, information and knowledge management.
IFF-Social Ecology is part of this NoE as subcontractor of the Austrian Federal Environment Agency
(“Umweltbundesamt,” http://www.umweltbundesamt.at).

PartizipA
“Participative model building, analysis of actors and ecosystems in industrialized agricultural
regions”
PartízipA is a collaborative project funded by the two research programmes “Socio-Ecological
Research” (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany) and “Austrian Landscape
Research” (Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture, Austria). The project started in 2003
and will run until 2006.
Industrialized agricultural regions generate numerous sustainability problems, the most important
being pesticide use and the nitrate contamination of ground water. Together with scientists from the
University of Osnabrück (Germany) and with actors from the Austrian region “St. Pölten Umland,”
PartícipA develops models that integrate socio-economic processes — such as formal and informal
institutional structures and processes, values, prices for agricultural products — and ecosystem
processes such as land use patterns, fertilizer application, and nitrogen flows in soils and groundwater
bodies. The integration of both socio-economic and ecological data, and the use of agent-based
modelling techniques as well as GIS will help us not only to understand processes and interactions
within and between the two spheres but also to build models for the development of scenarios and
strategies that help the regions to cope with future sustainability challenges.
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Project & Conference Reports

LAND Open Science Conference, Morelia, Mexico
Helmut Haberl held a plenary lecture at the LAND Open Science Conference “Global change and the
terrestrial human-environment system,” jointly sponsored by IGBP and IHDP, Morelia, Mexico, 1.-
5.12.2003 entitled “Land-Use Change and Socio-Economic Metabolism: An Approach to Analyze
Coupled Human Environment Systems”.
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Publications

Land Use and Sustainability Indicators
(Haberl, Wackernagel, Wrbka 2003)
– Haberl, Helmut, Mathis Wackernagel, and Thomas Wrbka. 2003. Land Use and Sustainability
Indicators. Special issue of Land Use Policy 21(3), Oxford: Pergamon / Elsevier.
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IFF Library highlights

The IFF library is constantly expanding its resources in the field of Social Ecology.
– Giampietro, Mario: Multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems. Boca Raton: CRC Press,
2004. (IFF-Wien: WP5046)
– Shennan, Stephen: Genes, Memes and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural
Evolution. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. (IFF-Wien: WP2639)

The library is open during regular office hours Mo-Fr in the IFF building, 5th floor, Schottenfeldgasse
29, 1070 Vienna, Austria.
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