The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Training Network (BESTNet) brings the benefits of research stimulated by Diversitas, a global-change research initiative, to students in US universities. Diversitas is asking novel scientific questions about the interdependence between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services, and economic, technical, and institutional change at the global scale. This initiative is stimulating new research methods designed to clarify the linkages between biodiversity change and human well-being. The core members of BESTNet are part of this interdisciplinary, international research network. BESTNet will both strengthen these research developments and bring the benefits of research stimulated by the global initiative to US students through networked research and research training activities.

BESTNet is developing two main research and research-training activities related to biodiversity and ecosystem services. First, annual training activities will be associated with research/researchtraining workshops where US and international researchers will address topics currently under discussion in global-change programs (e.g., modeling techniques for integrating biophysical and socioeconomic aspects of biodiversity change). Second, doctoral students are funded to spend time in the labs of participating scientists in the US and abroad. These workshops are open to interested participants and, because BESTNet links science and policy outcomes, nonacademic stakeholders. Student participation will be fully funded on a competitive basis; Diversitas will fund the participation of select international scientists in the research workshops.

The United Nation's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment established both a lexicon and an evidence base for understanding the consequences of biodiversity loss for human well-being. Follow-up activities by Diversitas include developing mechanisms to coordinate global action on assessment, monitoring, and research, as well as promoting specific research initiatives that address gaps identified by the assessment. BESTNet will both reinforce these research initiatives and undertake an activity that is beyond the charge of Diversitas-research training in the new, interdisciplinary biodiversity science. Broader impacts will include:

• developing an interdisciplinary community committed to policy-relevant research into the links between biodiversity change and human activities;
• enhancing the capacity to undertake interdisciplinary research within existing life and socialscience departments in US universities; and
• synthesizing research results on the local consequences of international biodiversity change and disseminating these results to decision-makers.

In addition, it is expected that the network will substantially strengthen US scientific input into the global-change programs and other international initiatives.