A holistic approach to studying social-ecological systems and its application to southern Transylvania

Abstract

. 2014. A holistic approach to studying social-ecological systems and its application to southern Transylvania. Ecology and Society 19(4): 32. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES- ABSTRACT. Global change presents risks and opportunities for social-ecological systems worldwide. Key challenges for sustainability science are to identify plausible future changes in social-ecological systems and find ways to reach socially and environmentally desirable conditions. In this context, regional-scale studies are important, but to date, many such studies have focused on a narrow set of issues or applied a narrow set of tools. Here, we present a holistic approach to work through the complexity posed by cross-scale interactions, spatial heterogeneity, and multiple uncertainties facing regional social-ecological systems. Our approach is spatially explicit and involves assessments of social conditions and natural capital bundles, social-ecological system dynamics, and current development trends. The resulting understanding is used in combination with scenario planning to map how current development trends might be amplified or dampened in the future. We illustrate this approach via a detailed case study in southern Transylvania, Romania, one of Europe's most significant biocultural refugia. Our goal was to understand current social-ecological dynamics and assess risks and opportunities for sustainable development. Our findings show that historical events have strongly shaped current conditions and current development trends in southern Transylvania. Moreover, although external drivers (including EU policies) set the general direction of regional development trajectories, local factors, including education, leadership, and the presence of bridging organizations, can enhance or counteract their effects. Our holistic approach was useful for generating an in-depth understanding of a regional social-ecological system and could be transferred to other parts of the world.

Participatory scenario planning in place-based social-ecological research: insights and experiences from 23 case studies

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Social-ecological drivers of multiple ecosystem services: what variables explain patterns of ecosystem services across the Norrström drainage basin?

“…However, understanding how this social-ecological coproduction of multiple services occurs in specific landscapes is poorly understood. Social-ecological interactions often produce distinct patterns of ecosystem services across landscapes, in the form of coherent sets of ecosystem service bundles (Bennett et al 2009, Raudsepp-Hearne et al 2010, Hanspach et al 2014. Management or policy measures that aim to enhance a single, particular service will miss this complexity and can lead to perverse effects caused by hidden trade-offs among services such as those between crop yield and water quality (Tilman et al 2002, Zhang et al 2007, and timber extraction and carbon storage in forests (Putz andRomero 2001, Nelson et al 2008).…”

Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society: Knowledge for sustainable stewardship of social-ecological systems

“…As highlighted by several papers in this special feature (Hanspach et al 2014, Carpenter et al 2015, Mitchell et al 2015) participatory scenario planning is an increasingly popular tool in place-based environmental research for evaluating alternative futures of social-ecological systems. Oteros-Rozas et al (2015) review 23 cases of participatory scenario planning in a wide range of case-studies affiliated to PECS.…”

“…The authors recognize that scenarios are difficult to replicate as a research method, but highlight how useful they can be in exploring how different drivers, such as climate change, could play out in the watershed and conclude that scenarios will continue to be a useful tool for future social-ecological research. Hanspach et al (2014) use participatory scenarios to explore, identify, and analyze alternative social-ecological futures in Southern Transylvania. They first apply a holistic approach to combine the local socialecological conditions throughout the study area with a description of the regional system dynamics and a spatially explicit understanding of current development trends for eight different variables (e.g., land use intensification, forest exploitation, emigration).…”