Unlike some aspects of climate change, processes related to biodiversity and ecosystem services are typically place-based. Inspired by successes in modeling complex systems at other scales of organization, notably the cell (Karr et al., 2012), the Island Digital Ecosystem Avatars (IDEA) Consortium aims to build computer simulations ("avatars") to the scale of whole social-ecological systems. With a common boundary constraining their physical, ecological, and social networks, islands have long been recognized as model systems for ecology and evolution. This is why the island of Moorea (French Polynesia) was selected to build such an "avatar". The Moorea IDEA aims to understand how biodiversity, ecosystem services, and society will co-evolve over the next several decades on this island, depending upon what actions are taken. Specifically: (1) what is the physical biological, and social state of the island system today?