Topic: Linking social and ecological systems; lessons from interdisciplinary research

Background/Question/Methods

The environment is both a setting for and a product of human interactions. This is particularly evident in urban systems, but relevant across the spectrum of developed and natural areas. Research on environmental change indicates that the decline in the ability of many ecosystems to provide environmental services has significant impacts on human well-being. Understanding the processes and feedbacks that link social and ecological systems is critical for adaptively managing these interdependent systems to achieve a sustainable future. To date, no one model sufficiently frames the processes of structural change in social systems, the diverse capabilities and decision-processes of individual actors, or incorporates social theory in a way that is consistent with ecological theories of complex adaptive systems. Furthermore, the mechanisms for feedbacks across systems are seldom addressed.

Results/Conclusions

This article presents a new perspective for integrating social and ecological systems. It is a framework detailing the structuration of social-ecological complex adaptive systems by linking strong structuration theory from sociology with the theory of hierarchical patch dynamics from landscape ecology. Structuration is a recursive process where structures are both the medium for and product of social action and ecological disturbance. Within this framework, individual actions are both influenced by and can influence social systems such as markets and power relations. While operating under different mechanisms, small ecological disturbances also create their own future context in a cyclic manner. This framework describes in detail the interactive processes of individual actions/disturbances that create (elaborate, reproduce or change) both social and ecological systems during one cycle, and then respond to feedbacks from both systems for subsequent actions/disturbances. In doing so, the framework addresses the problems of overly structural or overly local/agent based explanations in both social and ecological systems. A discussion of how we believe this framework is an improvement over other models that have been developed is presented. This framework is proposed as a tool useful for research and evaluation of urban ecosystems, conservation policies, programs of payments for environmental services, and for land use change in general.