Mountain Social Ecological Observatory Network

Special Issue in FREE and MtnSEON Legacy

The federal funding for MtnSEON concluded in 2018. The final efforts for the project are described in a special issue in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, which is open access courtesy of the Ecological Society of America. Read the issue online.

MtnSEON working group efforts focused on the Blue Mountains, Invasive Species, Training and Education, and more are being supported as legacy efforts under new programs, including: RCN:EyesNorth (NSF# 1642487); the Social Ecological Systems Training and Education Program (SESTEP); the Social Ecological Systems Current Practices Archive by Idaho EPSCoR; and the newly funded EngageINFEWS RCN (NSF# 1856059).

Learn more about MtnSEON below.

The Mountain Social Ecological Observatory Network (MtnSEON) is a National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN), which combines multiple sources of knowledge on how processes function within and between ecosystem and socioeconomic elements of complex mountain landscapes in order to improve social and ecological resilience and sustainability. Our main goal is addressing the question: How can we use research and education partnerships to reduce vulnerability, increase resilience, and support sustainability in complex mountain landscapes? 

What do we do?

MtnSEON has three main functions to assist in answering this overarching question: 1) Facilitate, coordinate, integrate, and synthesize existing programs and research, both regionally and internationally; 2) Design collaborative, interactive research, education, and governance projects; and 3) Create partnerships which will use new approaches to produce linked, scalable models and methods to inform management decisions affecting the resilience of mountain landscapes.

MtnSEON stresses collaboration between and integration of socio-economic and biophysical sciences, developing new and expanding existing partnerships to increase interdisciplinary research and application. Our initial focus has been the development of Working Groups, which use Social Ecological Systems (SES) approaches to conduct research and analysis regarding or relevant to mountain systems. Research questions are varied, addressing various social, ecological, or scientific elements.

Current working group focuses include (but are not limited to): collaborative governance in mountain landscapes; SES approaches to plant invasion in the Intermountain West; socio-economic and ecological dynamics of large lakes; integrated approaches to understanding the dynamics of Bark Beetles in the American West; SES training and education; climate change effects on river habitats and fisheries; social and ecological dynamics of the Blue Mountain Ecoregion of the PNW; social dynamics of fire across landscapes; and conflict caused by interactions with large carnivores.