[Les Kaufman]

Thanks to UTS and Stanford for stepping forward on this.
A step that we can take to address the third goal of building sustainability science, is to network the research teams actively engaged in this area.   One important subdiscipline is the search for lawfulness in coupled human and natural systems (CHANS), supported by the development of analytical tools for scenario analysis.  We have created the Landscape Analysis Partnership for Ecosystem Services- a useful, though still loose, network among four teams practicing spatially explicit analysis of ecosystem service flows and tradeoffs.  These are based at Boston University (using the MIMES platform); Stanford (NatCap project, InVEST); UCSB (Bren School, ESTA); and Conservation International (Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Ecosystem Science and Economics, ARIES).  The institutions happen to be US, but their allied practitioners are all over the world.  I suggest that LAPES grow in vigor and function as a working group in association with MAHB.  
What minimum number of other working groups could we add to constitute a core virtual facility for sustainability science?  I wish we still had Steve Schneider here, but I think we can still manage on our own.
Les Kaufman, CHANS Task Force lead, Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University and Conservation International 
 

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