Past Present Sustainability Reseach Unit (PAES) focuses on understanding the ecological and climate related interlinkages with human activities in the present day and in the long-term historic past. The research perspective is from natural sciences and is enriched by interdisciplinary Post-docs and collaborations outside the core discipline. We aim for more transdisciplinary research efforts to be able to evaluate potential future pathways for society at large. At the moment PAES is concentrating on three research fronts:

1) How biotic interactions have been changed or modified by growing human influence from local to global scales (timescale: 1000s -100s yrs)
(e.g. how has ecological community structures changed due to human influence, how have interactions and biodiversity changed etc.)

2) Long-term SES analysis of Northern Fennoscandia (timescale: 100s - 10s yrs)
(e.g. How have the local livelihoods, like reindeer herding or forest use changed in tandem with human alteration of habitats, how has infrastructure changed the natural productivity of areas etc.)

3) The historically built path-dependencies affecting the current policies in Finland and the contemporary dynamics of socio-ecological metabolism (timescale: from 2-3 yrs to decades)
(E.g. How the infrastructure / policies / decision-making frameworks are leading to path-dependencies, how path-dependencies are affecting societal transitions and long-term risks during the next 10-50 yrs)