This organized oral session will present examples of implementation of earth stewardship in a diverse array of working ecosystems. People who draw their livelihoods from marine, riverine, lake, forest, prairie, agro-ecological, and urban ecosystems are devising, or relearning, ways to restore and protect these ecosystems from ecological degradation while still allowing important human needs to be met by natural resources. Our purpose in this session to communicate ideas and insights that arise from particular efforts at improved stewardship, yet may be useful in guiding change in other social-ecological systems. Each speaker will be asked to briefly describe their social-ecological system in its past, present, and alternative future states. They will be asked to identify the current impediments to good stewardship and how their projects are moving to overcoming those challenges. They will discuss the thinking behind their stewardship efforts, and how they are assessing, or will assess, whether their efforts are moving the system towards more resilience and sustainability. Some speakers will discuss how stewardship efforts can plan for and accommodate both directional change (e.g. in population density or climate warming) and surprises (fires, species invasions, disease outbreaks) that affect resource condition. We look forward to inserting the two cases or perspectives from the Program Chair to fill out the examples we have chosen. For people who think inductively, concrete case histories will help clarify of the theme of earth stewardship. As Gordon Bonan said: “Changing land use, like global climate change, is a grand unplanned experiment with unknown social and environmental consequences. Unlike global change, land use occurs locally in our communities. It gives substance to environmental issues at spatial and temporal scales to which people can see and respond: we see these changes happen in our communities, often over a period of a few years” ((Bonan, G. 2008, Ecological Climatology, p. xv). We have chosen speakers who will share their “planned experiments” for implementing better land, water, or marine stewardship in diverse settings to improve local communities. We hope their discussions will bring to light ideas and principles that transfer among systems, and contribute to reversing the deterioration of Earth’s life support systems over larger scales.