NSERC ResNet: A network for monitoring, modelling, and managing Canada's ecosystem services for sustainability and resilience

A Canadian future of shared health, prosperity, and resilience will depend on our ability to manage ecosystems

and all the benefits they provide for human well-being now and in the future. Indeed, the central challenge of

our lifetime is to meet our needs for food, energy, and other critical ecosystem services now without

undermining the ability to provide these services into the future, even as we face looming global environmental

challenges. Our network of researchers will monitor and model ecosystem services - the benefits people obtain

from nature - in a series of working landscapes across Canada. Working landscapes - land actively used for

production of resources such as food, fish, and forest products - are of particular importance for their

contributions to Canadians' wellbeing. Historically, the focus in working landscapes has been on the cheap,

reliable, and efficient production of individual ES such as food, energy, or timber. Studies of the other

ecosystems services provided by these landscapes, including carbon storage, flood regulation, recreation,

spiritual enhancement, have lagged behind. Our network will measure a broad variety of ecosystem services in

a set of six working landscapes across Canada, with the goal of scaling up the understanding we gain through

these six landscape studies to deliver an ES dashboard for Canada that can be used to measure our progress

towards sustainability and resilience of working landscapes for all Canadians.