The Water Metabolism of Socio‐Ecological Systems: Reflections and a Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Summary Water accounting is an unresolved issue in metabolism studies. Through epistemological analysis, we show that the problem resides in the conceptualization of social metabolism. Social metabolism has its origins in the analysis of societal energetics, which has led to an exclusive focus on society and a representation based on linear throughputs at a single scale. Whereas fossil energy resources constitute a mere stock flow for society, water constitutes a set of both funds and flows essential for the maintenance of the internal organization and stability of society and ecosystems. This means that societies and ecosystems need water for different reasons. Consequently, the analysis of water requires the simultaneous adoption of multiple narratives and scales. The development of hydrology toward a socio‐eco‐hydrology (SE‐hydrology) deals with this multidimensionality, but lacks a conceptualization of the coupled human‐water system useful to integrate the assessment of water processes at different rates and scales. We propose a conceptual framework, based on the multiscale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism approach, that combines the perspectives of SE‐hydrology and social metabolism. This framework describes society and the embedding ecosystem as two distinct levels of the same hierarchical system (i.e., the socioecological system), expressing two distinct, but tightly interconnected, metabolic patterns (societal and ecosystem) at different spatiotemporal scales. Using food grain production in Punjab as an example, we show that this framework can accommodate the multiple interpretations of social metabolism found in different scientific fields.

An Integrated Approach to Determining the Capacity of Ecosystems to Supply Ecosystem Services into Life Cycle Assessment for a Carbon Capture System

“…Figure 1 illustrates and contextualizes the connections between the requirement to supply flows of material and energy for a process or PS from the technosphere and the biophysical constraints in a territory to provide ecosystem services. Further, the figure allows to understand the link between these two processes, highlighting that the changes in the EFs can only be observed on a large timescale (e.g., years, decades or centuries), which is different to the short timescale (seconds or hours) perceived by humans or the societal fund [45,47] to a large spatial scale. The forest carbon sequestration (FCS) and GIS modeling to analyze the supply and sink capacity for the ecosystem to develop this FF-LCA integrating approach were considered.…”

“…The objective of this study is to present a methodological proposal on the flows-EFs nexus into the LCI and life cycle environmental impact (LCIA) based on the FF model and spatiotemporal scale, incorporating the perspective of the socio-ecological metabolism [47,48] from a LCA study [3] related to CHP plants without (w/o) and with (w) post-carbon capture (CHP wPCC).…”

“…Finally, the stock elements are accumulated flows that change their size over time [6]. Moreover, MuSIASEM incorporates three elements to check the sustainability of SES, the feasibility (external constraints in the biosphere), the viability (internal constraints in the technosphere), and the desirability (compatibility with normative values and societal institutions) [47,48].…”

Socioeconomic Metabolism Takes the Stage in the International Environmental Policy Debate: A Special Issue to Review Research Progress and Policy Impacts

“…Water is the largest “material” flow in any economy, but has not yet entered socioeconomic metabolism analysis in a systematic way. The contribution by Madrid‐López and Giampietro () applies a framework for the analysis of water metabolism that describes society and the embedding ecosystem as two distinct levels of the same hierarchical system. They argue that the nonlinearity of water flows has meant that the current methods for MFA cannot be applied and they introduce a way in which the socioecological system is expressed as two distinct, but tightly interconnected, metabolic patterns (societal and ecosystem) at different spatiotemporal scales, which facilitates the analysis of water metabolism.…”

Changes of human time and land use pattern in one mega city's urban metabolism: a multi-scale integrated analysis of Shanghai

“…Siciliano et al(2012) applied the MuSIASEM method to study the changes of two Italian regions over time. Madrid-López and Giampietro (2015) developed the scheme to study the water metabolism and applied to Punjab in India. However, studies at the city level are very rare in the international journals.…”