A large working group organized by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis recently summarized priorities for synthesis in ecology. Priorities include addressing social inequities in ecological processes and increasing data access, understanding coupled human-natural systems, tackling the enormous theoretical challenges of scale and scaling, addressing resilience of complex systems, and increasing our ability to predict the outcomes of ecological processes.
Halpern, B. S., C. Boettiger, M. C. Dietze, J. A. Gephart, P. Gonzalez, N. B. Grimm, P. M. Groffman, J. Gurevitch, S. E. Hobbie, K. J. Komatsu, K. J. Kroeker, H. J. Lahr, D. M. Lodge, C. J. Lortie, J. S. S. Lowndes, F. Micheli, H. P. Possingham, M. H. Ruckelshaus, C. Scarborough, C. L. Wood, G. C. Wu, & >100 others, including T.K. Harms. 2023. Priorities for synthesis research in ecology and environmental science. Ecosphere 14. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4342