A combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches in addressing major challenges of long-term socio-ecological research—the Taiwan experience

Abstract Long-term social-ecological research (LTSER) has been suggested to have high potential in providing insights and knowledge necessary for a sustainability transition. However, long-term and transdisciplinary, the core value of LTSER, remain major challenges. We describe how Taiwan LTSER addressed the two challenges through an approach that combines bottom up and top down processes. From the top-down, the funding agency categorized LTSER as a core facility like research vessels that monitors fundamental ecological and social drivers and indicators of the dynamics of the inter-linked and entangled social and ecological systems. From the top down, the funding agency established a LTSER program office which set criteria, highlighting that transdisciplinary is a pre-requisite for LTSER site selection. From the bottom up, scientists proposed potential LTSER sites based on their interest and each potential site formed a team that includes both natural scientists and social scientists. Thus, transdisciplinary research is a common understanding among scientists that propose a specific site. Because Taiwan LTSER is not a re-start or shift from the previous Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) in Taiwan, the potential conflict due to the lack of consensus on extending the research to include social dimension is avoided. Taiwan LTSER was initiated in 2021 and has established six sites by 2024. Based on the known challenges, Taiwan LTSER innovated the development and governance of LTSER to address the challenges. Thus, although it is still developing, sharing Taiwan LTSER experience to the academia is important and it would be informative to check the progress of Taiwan LTSER in the decades to come.