Dynamics of coupled human-landscape systems

Werner, B. T.; McNamara, D. E.

doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2007.04.020

Cited by 151 publications

(146 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…The bottom plot of Figure 2 shows a schematic representation of our approach, which draws from emerging interdisciplinary frameworks, such as socioecological systems, complex system theories, and sociohydrology [Liu et al, 2007;Werner and McNamara, 2007;Ostrom, 2009;Sivapalan et al, 2012;Srinivasan et al, 2012;Di Baldassarre et al, 2013b;Montanari et al, 2013]. The proposed approach explicitly account for the dynamics of risk by capturing the continuous interactions and mutual feedbacks between flooding and society.…”

Section: A Novel Approach To Explore Changes In Flood Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Capturing feedbacks between physical and social processes

Baldassarre

Viglione²,

Carr

et al. 2015

Water Resources Research

392

369

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In flood risk assessment, there remains a lack of analytical frameworks capturing the dynamics emerging from two-way feedbacks between physical and social processes, such as adaptation and levee effect. The former, ''adaptation effect'', relates to the observation that the occurrence of more frequent flooding is often associated with decreasing vulnerability. The latter, ''levee effect'', relates to the observation that the non-occurrence of frequent flooding (possibly caused by flood protection structures, e.g. levees) is often associated to increasing vulnerability. As current analytical frameworks do not capture these dynamics, projections of future flood risk are not realistic. In this paper, we develop a new approach whereby the mutual interactions and continuous feedbacks between floods and societies are explicitly accounted for. Moreover, we show an application of this approach by using a socio-hydrological model to simulate the behavior of two main prototypes of societies: green societies, which cope with flooding by resettling out of flood-prone areas; and technological societies, which deal with flooding also by building levees or dikes. This application shows that the proposed approach is able to capture and explain the aforementioned dynamics (i.e. adaptation and levee effect) and therefore contribute to a better understanding of changes in flood risk, within an iterative process of theory development and empirical research.

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Section: A Novel Approach To Explore Changes In Flood Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Capturing feedbacks between physical and social processes

Baldassarre

Viglione²,

Carr

et al. 2015

Water Resources Research

392

369

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Over the past decades, much progress has been made in understanding impacts of telecouplings under systems frameworks such as coupled human and natural systems (Liu et al 2007b), coupled human-landscape systems (Werner and McNamara 2007), or coupled social-ecological systems (Walker et al 2004, Ostrom 2009). In them, telecouplings were usually treated as static external drivers with the assumptions that external drivers affect local couplings (human-nature interactions at the local scale) (Mena et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback of telecoupling: the case of a payments for ecosystem services program

Yang¹,

Lupi²,

Zhang³

et al. 2018

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Around the globe, previously isolated rural areas are increasingly connected with other distant places (e.g., cities) by telecouplings (i.e., environmental and socioeconomic interactions over distances) such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, labor migration, and tourism. Although many studies have estimated impacts of telecouplings in rural areas, little is known about how these impacts might in turn affect telecouplings themselves through feedbacks. Using household survey data collected in China's Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), we evaluated an unexpected impact of the telecoupling of the Grain to Green Program (GTGP)-one of the largest PES programs in the world. This impact may trigger a feedback that can strengthen the GTGP in the future. A previous study in Wolong found that afforestation on marginal cropland promoted by the GTGP has significantly intensified crop damage by wildlife on nearby remaining cropland. We evaluated how this change might in turn affect the GTGP by estimating the impact of crop damage induced by the current GTGP on local households' willingness to participate in possible future GTGP. Our results show that due to the impact of the current GTGP on crop damage, local households may enroll 10.4% more cropland that is close to the afforested lands in future GTGP, which suggests a positive feedback that will strengthen the influences of the GTGP in Wolong and beyond. Our study highlights that local human-nature interactions driven by telecouplings, such as human-wildlife conflicts, may trigger feedbacks that affect telecouplings themselves. With improved understanding of telecouplings' feedbacks, scientists, policy-makers, and conservation practitioners can better anticipate the complex interactions among different places and design effective conservation strategies for achieving sustainability objectives such as those set by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

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“…In the US, the per-cubic-yard cost of sand for beach nourishment has risen sevenfold since the 1970s (Seabrook, 2013). And third, that a fundamental consequence of hazard mitigation is to filter out small-scale hazard events at the greater expense of infrequent, large ones (Werner and McNamara, 2007). Assessing the risk of a natural hazard involves accounting for the economic value of infrastructure or activities vulnerable to a hazard event, and the probability that an event of a given magnitude will occur.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that the logic of the second hypothesis regarding Mileti's paradox, to be independent of the third, assumes that coastal development growth is unrelated to mitigation interventions. In fact, property values and development pressures tend to increase with investment in engineered protection against natural hazards, especially along coastlines; in the absence of hazard mitigation, property values in vulnerable places would be completely different (Mileti, 1999;Werner and McNamara, 2007;. Parsing the complex dynamics of coupled human-environmental systems (also called coupled humannatural systems, coupled human-landscape systems, and coupled social-ecological systems) is a grand challenge in the physical and social sciences (Kates et al, 2001;Haff, 2003;Liu et al, 2007a;Ostrom et al, 2007;NRC, 2002NRC, , 2010Ostrom, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threshold effects of hazard mitigation in coastal human–environmental systems

Lazarus

2014

Earth Surf. Dynam.

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Abstract. Despite improved scientific insight into physical and social dynamics related to natural disasters, the financial cost of extreme events continues to rise. This paradox is particularly evident along developed coastlines, where future hazards are projected to intensify with consequences of climate change, and where the presence of valuable infrastructure exacerbates risk. By design, coastal hazard mitigation buffers human activities against the variability of natural phenomena such as storms. But hazard mitigation also sets up feedbacks between human and natural dynamics. This paper explores developed coastlines as exemplary coupled human-environmental systems in which hazard mitigation is the key coupling mechanism. Results from a simplified numerical model of an agent-managed seawall illustrate the nonlinear effects that economic and physical thresholds can impart into coastal human-environmental system dynamics. The scale of mitigation action affects the time frame over which human activities and natural hazards interact. By accelerating environmental changes observable in some settings over human timescales of years to decades, climate change may temporarily strengthen the coupling between human and environmental dynamics. However, climate change could ultimately result in weaker coupling at those human timescales as mitigation actions increasingly engage global-scale systems.

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Dynamics of coupled human-landscape systems

Cited by 151 publications

References 49 publications

Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Capturing feedbacks between physical and social processes

Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Capturing feedbacks between physical and social processes

Feedback of telecoupling: the case of a payments for ecosystem services program

Threshold effects of hazard mitigation in coastal human–environmental systems

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