John E. Quinn

Formal undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have provided students with authentic research experiences in ecology for decades, but accessibility to these resources is inherently limited, as evidenced during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Moreover, UREs often do not reflect the diversity of locations of current ecological publications. Open online educational resources (OERs) can address the need for more accessible resources, but they usually rely on the curation of static content and can be functionally restricted by a lack of pedagogical instructions. The OCELOTS network (Online Content for Experiential Learning of Tropical Systems) addresses these gaps by shifting the OER model from static curation to a dynamic, scalable ‘ incubator matrix ’ . Rather than serving as a passive repository for disconnected teaching files, OCELOTS acts as a structured workshop and collaborative peer review network where active researchers translate their own peer‐reviewed primary literature into modular, narrative‐driven OER case studies, hereafter referred to as ‘modules’. A combination of factors contributes to OCELOTS' novelty. (a) Researchers who published the study are part of the module‐creating team. (b) Modules are place‐based and globally networked and designed for any type of instructional setting. (c) Peer review is conducted through a living collaborative model rather than a static editorial review. (d) Embedded real‐time data tools use applications that incorporate actual field datasets collected by the module authors. (e) Instructors publish implementation plans and teaching notes for using modules in undergraduate courses. (f) The design is explicitly decolonial in its multilingual accessibility. We summarize the various ways in which 29 OCELOTS modules, representing the work of 68 authors in various tropical field sites in 12 countries, have been created, implemented, adapted, and disseminated. We reflect on how this network has enabled these activities that portray a range of scientific content, processes, and methods in an immersive way. Moving beyond the limitations of standard static text portals, the OCELOTS network presents a highly transferable methodological framework. It demonstrates how global research coordination networks can actively create, review, and implement high‐quality interactive open materials that democratize complex biological data across diverse institutional types around the world.

Purpose of Review: Conservation efforts are expanding from protected areas into landscapes where human activities and nature coexist. Traditional conservation planning, which relies on ecological and economic metrics, is often inadequate for these complex socio-ecological systems. This review explores the integration of relational values, the meaningful connections people form with nature, into conservation planning for these multifunctional landscapes, addressing a gap in the current literature. Recent Findings: A review of recent literature confirms a growing but still limited adoption of relational values in conservation planning. Key findings show that successful conservation in multifunctional landscapes requires integrating ecological knowledge with social, economic, and cultural considerations through robust stakeholder engagement. However, challenges persist, including conflicts between stakeholder priorities. Furthermore, there is a lack of standardized methods for measuring both landscape multifunctionality and the plural values people hold, which can stall conservation efforts. Summary: To be more effective, conservation planning must move beyond its traditional focus and adopt a holistic approach grounded in strong ecological data and genuine engagement with diverse human values. Recognizing and incorporating relational values is needed for developing legitimate plans that inspire long-term stewardship. Achieving conservation goals necessitates a portfolio approach, using a range of tools from protected areas to incentive programs, to create resilient landscapes that benefit both people and nature. Future success depends on bridging the gap between conservation theory and on-the-ground implementation by genuinely including plural value systems in the planning process.

Background/Introduction: Natural disasters are becoming more frequent. The crises that follow are becoming more impactful along with diverse emergency-prone hazards and security contexts. EMTs play a crucial role in emergency and disaster response offering timely medical assistance, stabilizing patients, and ensuring safe transport to medical facilities. EMTs must have public health competencies to evaluate, prioritize, and resource all types of medical and public health emergencies. Objectives: Define the essential competencies for leading/coordinating actions between public health and disaster medicine to reliably prepare EMTs for lasting success. Method/Description: We hosted an international colloquium targeted at EMT capacity building and training. Results/Outcomes: EMTs work in environments with limited resources, including medical supplies, equipment, personnel, which impacts their ability to provide care. EMTs provide care to individuals and communities during recovery and provide medical assistance for displaced individuals, addressing acute health concerns and chronic conditions. They empower individuals and communities to take active roles in their recovery fostering empowerment, preparedness, and cohesion. EMTs ensure continuity of care and effectively address emerging health concerns. Conclusion: Continued investment is needed in public health training, resources, and support systems to enhance the effectiveness of EMTs in disaster management: 1) training equips EMTs with critical team competencies, 2) adequate resources, including medical supplies, equipment/transportation, are essential for EMTs, 3) investment in mental health support systems to address the psychological impacts of disaster response and recovery, 4) funding research initiatives and embracing technological advancements helps identify best practices and develop evidence-based protocols, 5) establish (international) regulatory framework, registration, and individual competency certification to professionalize EMT cadre.

Aim: The urgency for remote, reliable and scalable biodiversity monitoring amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems has sparked worldwide interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), which can track life underwater and on land. However, we lack a unified methodology to report this sampling effort and a comprehensive overview of PAM coverage to gauge its potential as a global research and monitoring tool. To address this gap, we created the Worldwide Soundscapes project, a collaborative network and growing database comprising metadata from 416 datasets across all realms (terrestrial, marine, freshwater and subterranean).Location: Worldwide, 12,343 sites, all ecosystem types.Time Period: 1991 to present.Major Taxa Studied: All soniferous taxa.Methods: We synthesise sampling coverage across spatial, temporal and ecological scales using metadata describing sampling locations, deployment schedules, focal taxa and audio recording parameters. We explore global trends in biological, anthropogenic and geophysical sounds based on 168 selected recordings from 12 ecosystems across all realms.Results: Terrestrial sampling is spatially denser (46 sites per million square kilometre—Mkm²) than aquatic sampling (0.3 and 1.8 sites/Mkm² in oceans and fresh water) with only two subterranean datasets. Although diel and lunar cycles are well sampled across realms, only marine datasets (55%) comprehensively sample all seasons. Across the 12 ecosystems selected for exploring global acoustic trends, biological sounds showed contrasting diel patterns across ecosystems, declined with distance from the Equator, and were negatively correlated with anthropogenic sounds.Main Conclusions: PAM can inform macroecological studies as well as global conservation and phenology syntheses, but representation can be improved by expanding terrestrial taxonomic scope, sampling coverage in the high seas and subterranean ecosystems, and spatio‐temporal replication in freshwater habitats. Overall, this worldwide PAM network holds promise to support cross‐realm biodiversity research and monitoring efforts.

Societal Impact Statement: Forest ecosystems absorb and store about 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions annually and are increasingly shaped by human land use and management. Climate change interacts with land use and forest dynamics to influence observed carbon stocks and the strength of the land carbon sink. We show that climate change effects on modeled forest land carbon stocks are strongest in tropical wildlands that have limited human influence. Global forest carbon stocks and carbon sink strength may decline as climate change and anthropogenic influences intensify, with wildland tropical forests, especially in Amazonia, likely being especially vulnerable.Summary: Human effects on ecosystems date back thousands of years, and anthropogenic biomes—anthromes—broadly incorporate the effects of human population density and land use on ecosystems. Forests are integral to the global carbon cycle, containing large biomass carbon stocks, yet their responses to land use and climate change are uncertain but critical to informing climate change mitigation strategies, ecosystem management, and Earth system modeling. Using an anthromes perspective and the site locations from the Global Forest Carbon (ForC) Database, we compare intensively used, cultured, and wildland forest lands in tropical and extratropical regions. We summarize recent past (1900‐present) patterns of land use intensification, and we use a feedback analysis of Earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 to estimate the sensitivity of forest carbon stocks to CO₂ and temperature change for different anthromes among regions. Modeled global forest carbon stock responses are positive for CO₂ increase but neutral to negative for temperature increase. Across anthromes (intensively used, cultured, and wildland forest areas), modeled forest carbon stock responses of temperate and boreal forests are less variable than those of tropical forests. Tropical wildland forest areas appear especially sensitive to CO₂ and temperature change, with the negative temperature response highlighting the potential vulnerability of the globally significant carbon stock in tropical forests. The net effect of anthropogenic activities—including land‐use intensification and environmental change and their interactions with natural forest dynamics—will shape future forest carbon stock changes. These interactive effects will likely be strongest in tropical wildlands.

Biodiversity and ecosystem service models are frequently used to consider current conditions or recent changes in the availability of a service. The application of scenarios for biodiversity and ecosystem service assessment remains underdeveloped, particularly co-designed and fine-granular scenarios across different decision-making boundaries. Consequently, the data created by these modeling efforts may not be as valuable to conservation partners and policy makers. In this project, we used land use and land cover change scenarios co-developed with local and regional decision-makers in northwestern Virginia USA as key inputs for 18 different biodiversity and ecosystem service models. Specifically, we used the InVEST suite of models to predict the change in biodiversity and ecosystem indicators and evaluated differences in that change between scenarios and decision-making boundaries. We found that the scenarios produced distinct results for the majority of biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially as a function of population growth. However, we also found that some services varied more as a function of subregions reflecting the existing diversity of ecosystems and governance structures in the area. The co-designed scenarios and summary of the data across units resulted in the production of varied results that can be used to support land use planning by implementing partners.