Mariana Gómez Soto is a Colombian social anthropologist, environmentalist, and activist. She holds a BA in social anthropology with minors in geography and biology, a master’s degree in social anthropology, and a second master’s degree in holistic sciences from Schumacher College. Gómez has worked closely with Indigenous communities for many years and has led key intercultural initiatives through her roles at the Gaia Amazonas Foundation and as a leader within the North Amazon Alliance. She is the lead author of a recent chapter on socio-bioeconomics and connectivity published in an assessment report by the Science Panel for the Amazon. Gómez also played a central role in founding the Amazonia Conectada coalition, which brings together the North Amazon Alliance, the Science Panel for the Amazon, RAISG, and Aguas Amazónicas—organizations with distinct areas of expertise united by a shared commitment to sustaining the Amazon’s terrestrial, biocultural, hydrological, and climatic interconnectivity. This wide-ranging InterDialogue opens with a discussion on dynamic, context-based frameworks for building and scaling a sustainable, circular bioeconomy in the Amazon. The conversation then turns to the importance of Amazonian connectivity, the evolving priorities of the North Amazon Alliance and Amazonia Conectada, and the critical role of interdisciplinary and intercultural education and collaboration in safeguarding the region’s future. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 1:42 – Defining Bioeconomics and Socio-Bioeconomy 5:44 – Envisioning a Circular Bioeconomy in the Amazon 9:52 – Developing Socio-Bioeconomic Trade Infrastructure 12:09 – Challenges of Modeling Bioeconomy in Practice 14:45 – Consequences of 2026 Elections for the Amazon 16:10 – Bioeconomic Product Identification and Market Integration 22:47 – Experiences Coordinating the North Amazon Alliance 24:27 – Analyzing Connectivity in the Amazon 31:47 – Hydrological-Terrestrial Interconnectivity 34:24 – Developing a New Methodology for Measuring Forest Connectivity 37:26 – Coordinating with Policymakers and the Public 44:11 – Experiences at COP30 49:49...

Earth Observation technologies are becoming increasingly valuable for understanding our changing world. They are also critical for formulating policies to protect ecosystems and support local communities. The availability of imagery taken from satellites, airplanes, and drones offers opportunities to detect deforestation, glacier melting, crop productivity, hurricane alerts, ocean temperatures, and much more. These applications have become wide-spread and are commonly featured in the news and on social media; an informed public can now be acutely aware of the significant effects that humans have on the landscape. However, other processes of land use change are too complex to be detected and understood solely from space. For example, detecting rich minerals, tracking illicit land activities (e.g., coca farming), and monitoring water salinity. For these and other complex land changes, the imagery itself might not be enough to understand the processes shaping these changes in the landscape. New ways of addressing these are needed. About 26 years ago, Jacqueline Geoghegan and her co authors wrote a chapter in the book People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science, titled “Socializing the Pixel and Pixelizing the Social in Land-Use and Land-Cover Change.” This chapter was a pioneering step forward in extracting more information from images and linking them with the social processes behind them. It helped me during my PhD studies and subsequent research to develop a strategy for connecting quantitative data from pixels with social mechanisms that impact land change. But how do these two approaches work together? The full Interdialogue with Paulo Murillo. The role of classification in traditional land use science relies on how effectively we can classify elements on the land surface. Classification is the most relevant task in remote sensing. We want to classify or differentiate between forests and agricultural fields or among diverse types of crops using...

In this InterDialogue, Spanish physicist and complex systems theorist Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes speaks with The InterPlex founder Daniel Henryk Rasolt about a wide range of topics, beginning with a discussion of LANET, the Latin American Conference on Complex Networks, which he helped found. Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes is a Full Professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, where he leads the Group of Theoretical & Applied Modeling (GOTHAM lab) at the BIFI Institute. Professor Gómez-Gardeñes has led a varied and impactful career. His research has explored topics such as collective behavior, nonlinear dynamics, evolutionary dynamics, epidemics, and theoretical biology, all from the standpoint of complex systems and network theory. He is currently organizing the 2026 CompleNet conference, to be held in Zaragoza from May 4 to 8. This dialogue ranges from Gómez-Gardeñes’s experiences as a thought leader in complex network sciences in Europe and Latin America to his work on epidemics, urban mobility, and metapopulation networks. He also touches on confronting anti-science rhetoric and the need for scientists to address misinformation by establishing effective links with the media and policymakers. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the complexity inherent to Colombia, a nation that Gómez-Gardeñes has spent much time working in, and a view toward his current and future projects. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 4:32 – How LANET Was Founded 8:23 – International Academic Exchange between Colombia and Europe 11:28 – The Role of Complex Networks in Interdisciplinary Collaborations 14:19 – Networking and Collaborating Through Conferences 17:17 – Building Local Capacity and Fostering International Collaborations 23:21 – Expanding Reach and Accessibility, Hybrid Courses 26:37 – Gómez-Gardeñes’s Research on Epidemics 32:33 – Metapopulation Networks 36:08 – Pivoting From Urban Mobility Research to Epidemics 41:10 – Mosquitoes as Vectors 47:03 – Socio-Behavioral Factors and Epidemic Forecasting...

Eng: The articulation of knowledge, expertise, and experiences from different social actors is essential for the identification of alternatives and solutions for the management of natural heritage, its sustainable use, and equitable exploitation. In this intergroup we focus on wetland and coastal socio-ecological systems, in Colombia and beyond, but invite those with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and expertise, to join. Esp: La articulación de conocimientos, pericia y experiencia de diferentes actores sociales es esencial para la identificación de alternativas y soluciones para la gestión del patrimonio natural, su uso sostenible y su explotacion equitativo. En este intergrupo nos centramos en los los sistemas socioecológicos costeros y de los humedales, tanto en Colombia como en el resto del mundo, pero invitamos a unirse a personas con diversos antecedentes, perspectivas y experiencia.

Ingo Allekotte is an Argentinian physicist who is currently the Project Manager of the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, the world’s largest cosmic ray observatory at approximately 3,000 square kilometers in area. He is also an Associate Professor at the Balseiro Institute in Bariloche, within beautiful Patagonia, and a researcher at the National Atomic Energy Commision of Argentina (CNEA). In our Interdialogue, we spoke about Cosmic Rays – what they are, the fascinating decades-long history of their detections, the risks that they pose for space travel, and the intersection between cosmic ray astrophysics, particle physics and even cosmology.  We then spoke more specifically about the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory and how this interdisciplinary “Big Science” project in Argentina, which incorporates hundreds of scientists from 17 different countries, came to be. Ingo explained some of the exciting discoveries made so far of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), and how they have conclusively demonstrated extragalactic origins. We also spoke about future exciting research objectives, parallel lines of research and Multi-Messenger astronomy. We concluded our conversation by focusing on science advocacy and the wide-ranging social value of large scientific collaborations like Pierre Auger, while also touching on the importance of maintaining balance and perspective in life by frequently connecting with nature, family and friends. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:09:19 – The intersection of cosmic ray astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology 00:19:57 – The importance of Earth’s atmosphere in shielding us from cosmic rays: subatomic particle showers, the evolution of life and the risks of space travel 00:26:24 – Observing “low energy” cosmic rays from the sun to ultra-high energy cosmic rays from extragalactic sources 00:34:18 – The Pierre Auger Observatory: history, design, collaborative structure and objectives 00:49:51 – Personal involvement with Pierre Auger and research interests in physics 00:57:09 – Beyond our...

Why life is complex and — most importantly — what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, “is screaming to be answered but seldom is even being asked.” In this three-article series, we review recent attempts across several scales to understand the origins of complex biological problems from the perspective of critical phenomena. Following a broad introduction to complexity, criticality and universality in Part 1, to illustrate the approach, three cases will be discussed in Parts 2 and 3; large scale brain dynamics, the characterization of spontaneous fluctuations of proteins, and the physiological complexity of the cell mitochondria network. Introduction In the last decade, we have witnessed an escalating interest in complex biological phenomena at all levels including macroevolution, neuroscience at different scales, and molecular biology. Potential progress is of paramount importance, thus we shall examine a bit how we are currently proceeding to carve out these new areas, starting with asking whether biological phenomena are more or less complex than other fundamental problems in physics. The answer is not clear at first, however striking differences exist in the approaches as well as in the sociology of both fields.  The history of physics records many important efforts in search for universality; large classes of phenomena must be explained in terms of a few fundamental laws. In contrast, biology more often seems to emphasize unique and singular aspects; because not all organisms are alike, there is a large diversity of species, families, etc… such that taxonomy ends up prevailing over integration of knowledge. This apparent uniqueness of each biological phenomena in some cases leads to overspecialization, which may, from time to time, encourage the creation of a sub-discipline for each new group of complex biological...