Framing the search for a theory of land use

ABSTRACT

Land system science and affiliated research linked to sustainability require improved understanding and theorization of land and its change as a social-ecological system (SES). The absence of a general land-use theory, anchored in the social subsystem but with explicit links to the environmental subsystem, hampers this effort. Drawing on land-use explanations, meta-analyses, and associated frameworks, we advance a broad framework structure of eight elements – aggregations of explanatory variables – with links to the biophysical subsystem, for systematic comparisons of extant explanations. Tests and models can be employed to identify which set of variables and their configurations provide robust explanations of across land uses, identifying the potential for theory development. The framework and its application are applicable to both top-down and bottom-up explanatory approaches employed in the social sciences. Links to the environmental subsystem invite future exploration of SES explanations that reach across the different dimensions of global change and sustainability science.     

Traps and transformations influencing the financial viability of tourism on private‐land conservation areas

The ability of private conservation organizations to remain financially viable is a key factor influencing their effectiveness. One‐third of financially motivated private‐land conservation areas (PLCAs) surveyed in South Africa are unprofitable, raising questions about landowners’ abilities to effectively adapt their business models to the socioeconomic environment. In any complex system, options for later adaptation can be constrained by starting conditions (path dependence). We tested 3 hypothesized drivers of path dependence in PLCA ecotourism and hunting business models: (H1) the initial size of a PLCA limits the number of mammalian game and thereby predators that can be sustained; (H2) initial investments in infrastructure limit the ability to introduce predators; and (H3) rainfall limits game and predator abundance. We further assessed how managing for financial stability (optimized game stocking) or ecological sustainability (allowing game to fluctuate with environmental conditions) influenced the ability to overcome path dependence. A mechanistic PLCA model based on simple ecological and financial rules was run for different initial conditions and management strategies, simulating landowner options for adapting their business model annually. Despite attempts by simulated landowners to increase profits, adopted business models after 13 years were differentiated by initial land and infrastructural assets, supporting H1 and H2. A conservation organization's initial assets can cause it to become locked into a financially vulnerable business model. In our 50‐year simulation, path dependence was overcome by fewer of the landowners who facilitated natural ecological variability than those who maintained constant hunting rates and predator numbers, but the latter experienced unsustainably high game densities in low rainfall years. Management for natural variability supported long‐term ecological sustainability but not shorter term socioeconomic sustainability for PLCAs. Our findings highlight trade‐offs between ecological and economic sustainability and suggest a role for governmental support of the private conservation industry.     

Combining Structured Decision Making and Value‐of‐Information Analyses to Identify Robust Management Strategies

Abstract: Structured decision making and value‐of‐information analyses can be used to identify robust management strategies even when uncertainty about the response of the system to management is high. We used these methods in a case study of management of the non‐native invasive species gray sallow willow (Salix cinerea) in alpine Australia. Establishment of this species is facilitated by wildfire. Managers are charged with developing a management strategy despite extensive uncertainty regarding the frequency of fires, the willow's demography, and the effectiveness of management actions. We worked with managers in Victoria to conduct a formal decision analysis. We used a dynamic model to identify the best management strategy for a range of budgets. We evaluated the robustness of the strategies to uncertainty with value‐of‐information analyses. Results of the value‐of‐information analysis indicated that reducing uncertainty would not change which management strategy was identified as the best unless budgets increased substantially. This outcome suggests there would be little value in implementing adaptive management for the problem we analyzed. The value‐of‐information analyses also highlighted that the main driver of gray sallow willow invasion (i.e., fire frequency) is not necessarily the same factor that is most important for decision making (i.e., willow seed dispersal distance). Value of‐information analyses enables managers to better target monitoring and research efforts toward factors critical to making the decision and to assess the need for adaptive management.     

Using a social learning configuration to increase Vietnamese smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity to respond to climate change

Social learning is crucial for local smallholder farmers in developing countries to improve their adaptive capacity and to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. While it is widely acknowledged that social learning is a necessary condition for adaptation, few studies have systematically investigated under which conditions particular forms of social learning are most successful in improving adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable groups. This study aims to design, implement and evaluate a social learning configuration in a coastal community in Vietnam. We make use of various methods during four workshop-based interventions with local smallholder farmers: interviews with key farmers and commune leaders, farmer-to-farmer learning, participatory observations and focus group discussions. The methods for evaluation of social learning configuration include in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and structured survey interviews. Our findings show that the social learning configuration used in this study leads to an increased problem ownership, an enhanced knowledge-base with regard to climate change impacts and production adaptation options, improved ability to see connections and interdependencies and finally, strengthened relationships and social cohesion. The results suggest that increased social learning in the community leads to increase in adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers and improves both their economic and environmental sustainability. We discuss the key lessons for designing learning configurations that can successfully enhance adaptive capacity and smallholder farmers’ agency and responsiveness to the challenges posed by climate change impacts.     

Participatory monitoring to connect local and global priorities for forest restoration

New global initiatives to restore forest landscapes present an unparalleled opportunity to reverse deforestation and forest degradation. Participatory monitoring could play a crucial role in providing accountability, generating local buy in, and catalyzing learning in monitoring systems that need scalability and adaptability to a range of local sites. We synthesized current knowledge from literature searches and interviews to provide lessons for the development of a scalable, multisite participatory monitoring system. Studies show that local people can collect accurate data on forest change, drivers of change, threats to reforestation, and biophysical and socioeconomic impacts that remote sensing cannot. They can do this at one‐third the cost of professionals. Successful participatory monitoring systems collect information on a few simple indicators, respond to local priorities, provide appropriate incentives for participation, and catalyze learning and decision making based on frequent analyses and multilevel interactions with other stakeholders. Participatory monitoring could provide a framework for linking global, national, and local needs, aspirations, and capacities for forest restoration.     

Use of GIS in siting stabilization pond facilities for domestic wastewater treatment

Geographic information systems (GIS) use is presented in the problem of sitting areas for construction of natural systems such as stabilization ponds (SPs) for domestic wastewater treatment. For this purpose, several variables, such as topography, land use, type of geological formation, distance to major rivers or lakes, distance to existing cities and villages, existence of environmentally protected areas, mean minimum monthly temperatures and required wastewater effluent characteristics were analyzed with the GIS, in order to accept or reject a particular area within a region. The method is applied in the region of Thrace (Northeast Greece) at the municipal level. The required area for SP systems was calculated in each of the 36 municipalities of Thrace (including two islands, Thassos and Samothraki) as a function of the population of each municipality, temperature and local wastewater effluent discharge criteria. Based on the GIS analysis, suitable locations were identified in each municipality first, and then the total required surface area of these systems was compared to the available surface area of each municipality, in order to decide whether SP systems could be a viable solution to the wastewater management problem in the particular region. In that way the present methodology offers a fast and simple method to check the suitability of new areas for construction of such systems.     

Across Space <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> Time: Social Responses to Large-Scale Biophysical Systems

The conceptual rubric of ecosystem management has been widely discussed and deliberated in conservation biology, environmental policy, and land/resource management. In this paper, I argue that two critical aspects of the ecosystem management concept require greater attention in policy and practice. First, although emphasis has been placed on the “space” of systems, the “time”—or rates of change—associated with biophysical and social systems has received much less consideration. Second, discussions of ecosystem management have often neglected the temporal disconnects between changes in biophysical systems and the response of social systems to management issues and challenges. The empirical basis of these points is a case study of the “Crown of the Continent Ecosystem,” an international transboundary area of the Rocky Mountains that surrounds Glacier National Park (USA) and Waterton Lakes National Park (Canada). This project assessed the experiences and perspectives of 1) middle- and upper-level government managers responsible for interjurisdictional cooperation, and 2) environmental nongovernment organizations with an international focus. I identify and describe 10 key challenges to increasing the extent and intensity of transboundary cooperation in land/resource management policy and practice. These issues are discussed in terms of their political, institutional, cultural, information-based, and perceptual elements. Analytic techniques include a combination of environmental history, semistructured interviews with 48 actors, and text analysis in a systematic qualitative framework. The central conclusion of this work is that the rates of response of human social systems must be better integrated with the rates of ecological change. This challenge is equal to or greater than the well-recognized need to adapt the spatial scale of human institutions to large-scale ecosystem processes and transboundary wildlife.     

分布式广播报警通知控制软件的设计与实现

首先介绍了公共报警通知系统的背景知识和重要意义.以发达国家和我国建设的一些公共报警通知系统为例,对公共报警通知系统的发展现状进行概述,并分析了现有技术方案的一些不足之处.在介绍了分址调频广播技术的基础上,对分布式广播报警通知控制软件的设计与实现进行了详细说明.该软件通过互斥量的方法解决了硬件资源和广播资源的访问冲突问题;通过超时重发指令的方式解决了网络通信中可能存在的指令数据包丢失问题;通过设置超时时间,自动识别发生网络故障或者设备故障的发射塔;在无需人工干预的情况下,自动重新控制恢复正常功能的发射塔.该软件实现了多个客户端对多个广播报警发射基站的高效、正确、和分布式控制,极大的发挥了基于分布式分址调频广播技术的公共报警通知系统的优点.该软件系统与配套的分布式分址调频广播硬件系统一起,形成了一种覆盖范围广、环境适应性强、分区报警控制灵活的公共报警通知系统,技术路线成熟,推广前景广阔.     

Converging disciplinary understandings of social aspects of resilience

Resilience thinking has developed separately in the bodies of literature on social-ecological systems, and that published principally within developmental psychology and mental health on the resilience of individuals. This paper explores what these bodies of literature might learn from the other towards a more integrated and enriched understanding of both social-ecological systems and social resilience. The psychology-based literature recognises a strong set of factors that enhance the strengths of individuals and communities, but lacks a sophisticated integration of the physical environmental context. The social-ecological systems literature offers an excellent foundation in complex adaptive systems, but tends to superimpose ecological concepts of system function onto the human domain, and needs to include an array of core social science concepts that are important to a full understanding of social-ecological systems. An example on north eastern Australia suggests how a converged understanding of social resilience could assist managers to acknowledge, enhance and foster social resilience in linked social-ecological systems.     

Policy support for rural economic development based on Holling’s ecological concept of panarchy

Globally, rural regions are searching for innovative growth opportunities to reinvigorate their economies. This paper examines the redevelopment of rural communities through an ecological lens – based on the notion of continuous cycles of adaptive change within complex systems as first identified within Holling’s concept of panarchy. Panarchy suggests that complex systems have more than a single equilibrium point and, instead, have some inherent resiliency based on the notion of multiple stable regimes. As such, panarchy provides a conceptual model that describes the ways in which complex social and ecological systems are organized and structured both spatially and temporally. By drawing parallels between the characteristics of ecological communities and rural economic systems, a novel framework is developed to assist policy-makers reflect on a rural community’s position along its own adaptive change cycle and, then, implement appropriate inventions to improve system resiliency – which in this case is linked with economic resiliency through development and/or growth. Supported by empirical data emerging from both key informant interviews and content analysis of current rural development policy, this work also identifies leverage points where policy intervention may be most advantageous by specifying the timing of policy instruments on the cycle. Specifically, this framework describes four leverage points, three major and one minor, to help push or pull rural regions into an area of higher resilience.