The global reach of human activities affects all natural ecosystems, so that the environment is best viewed as a social–ecological system. Consequently, a more integrative approach to environmental science, one that bridges the biophysical and social domains, is sorely needed. Although models and frameworks for social–ecological systems exist, few are explicitly designed to guide a long‐term interdisciplinary research program. Here, we present an iterative framework, “Press–Pulse Dynamics” (PPD), that integrates the biophysical and social sciences through an understanding of how human behaviors affect “press” and “pulse” dynamics and ecosystem processes. Such dynamics and processes, in turn, influence ecosystem services –thereby altering human behaviors and initiating feedbacks that impact the original dynamics and processes. We believe that research guided by the PPD framework will lead to a more thorough understanding of social–ecological systems and generate the knowledge needed to address pervasive environmental problems.

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The fate of private lands is widely seen as key to the fate of biodiversity in much of the world. Organizations that work to protect biodiversity on private lands often hope that conservation actions on one piece of land will leverage the actions of surrounding landowners. Few researchers have, however, examined whether protected lands do in fact encourage land conservation nearby or how protected lands affect development in the surrounding landscape. Using spatiotemporal data sets on land cover and land protection for three sites (western North Carolina, central Massachusetts, and central Arizona), we examined whether the existence of a protected area correlates with an increased rate of nearby land conservation or a decreased rate of nearby land development. At all sites, newly protected conservation areas tended to cluster close to preexisting protected areas. This may imply that the geography of contemporary conservation actions is influenced by past decisions on land protection, often made for reasons far removed from concerns about biodiversity. On the other hand, we found no evidence that proximity to protected areas correlates with a reduced rate of nearby land development. Indeed, on two of our three sites the development rate was significantly greater in regions with more protected land. This suggests that each conservation action should be justified and valued largely for what is protected on the targeted land, without much hope of broader conservation leverage effects.

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network enters its fourth decade with a distinguished record of achievement in ecological science. The value of long-term observations and experiments has never been more important for testing ecological theory and for addressing today's most difficult environmental challenges. The network's potential for tackling emergent continent-scale questions such as cryosphere loss and landscape change is becoming increasingly apparent on the basis of a capacity to combine long-term observations and experimental results with new observatory-based measurements, to study socioecological systems, to advance the use of environmental cyberinfrastructure, to promote environmental science literacy, and to engage with decisionmakers in framing major directions for research. The long-term context of network science, from understanding the past to forecasting the future, provides a valuable perspective for helping to solve many of the crucial environmental problems facing society today.

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