Sustainability Science Award to Prof. Marten Scheffer

The Ecological Society of America has awarded their

2004 Sustainability Science Award

to Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Steve Carpenter, Jon Foley and Brian Walker. The award recognizes their collaborative research on catastrophic "regime shifts" in ecosystems, which was featured in a Nature review article.

If you did not read it yet, you can download the article "Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems" as pdf.

Unprecedented directional changes in climate, human population, technology and social and economic institutions alter the structure and functioning of current ecological and social systems. The Sustainability Science Award recognizes the role that science can contribute to addressing these challenges.

The Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America is given annually to the authors of the peer reviewed paper published in the past five years that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences. One of the most pressing challenges facing humanity is the sustainability of important ecological, social and cultural processes in the face of changes in the forces that shape ecosystems and regions.

Find an explanation in Dutch and more work from professor Scheffer here.