John A Dearing

University of Southampton · Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences

Understanding the transient dynamics of interlinked social–ecological systems (SES) is imperative for assessing sustainability in the Anthropocene. However, how to identify critical transitions in real-world SES remains a formidable challenge. In this study, we present an evolutionary framework to characterize these dynamics over an extended histor...

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may...

Exogenous drivers may cause a gradual and reversible change in a lake equilibrium, or they may force it over a threshold to a persistent alternative stable state, described as a regime shift in the ecosystem. In the mid-and-lower Yangtze River Basin (MLYB), major environmental problems in shallow lakes have been eutrophication and abrupt algal bloo...

By understanding lake ecosystem resilience in the face of increasing environmental and anthropogenic stress, we can hope to anticipate future ecosystem instability. We assess recent historic ecosystem resilience using composition and network analyses of empirical zoobenthos chironomid (Diptera: Chironomidae; non-biting midges) reconstructions from...

Critical transitions between ecosystem states can be triggered by relatively small external forces or internal perturbations and may show time-lagged or hysteretic recovery. Understanding the precise mechanisms of a transition is important for ecosystem management, but it is hampered by a lack of information about the preceding interactions and ass...

The world’s ecosystems are undergoing unprecedented changes due to the impact of climate change and local human activities. A major concern is the possibility of tipping points where ecosystems and landscapes change abruptly to undesirable states. We consider what happens to the timing of tipping points when current stresses strengthen whilst syste...

Much is known about how climate change impacts ecosystem richness and turnover, but we have less understanding of its influence on ecosystem structures. Here, we use ecological metrics (beta diversity, compositional disorder and network skewness) to quantify the community structural responses of temperature-sensitive chironomids (Diptera: Chironomi...

Understanding the effects of climate change on ecosystem structure and stability is challenging, especially in high latitude regions that are predicted to experience the largest increases in ambient temperature. Global warming is likely to be a key driver of ecosystem change in freshwater lakes. Increased temperature can positively or negatively af...

Regime shifts can abruptly affect hydrological, climatic and terrestrial systems, leading to degraded ecosystems and impoverished societies. While the frequency of regime shifts is predicted to increase, the fundamental relationships between the spatial-temporal scales of shifts and their underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here we analyse...

The concept of complex social-ecological systems (SES) as a means for capturing system dynamics properties (e.g. interactions and feedbacks) has gained attention in policymaking and advancing evidence in understanding complex systems. In contexts with limited data, conceptual system dynamic models offer a promising entry point to overcome challenge...

Eutrophication and sedimentation are affecting global Marine Protected Area (MPA) ecosystems, such as estuaries, as catchments are developed and sea levels rise. Managers are often faced with short term datasets and modelling evidence with which to undertake management of these complex open systems. Longer term datasets which monitor environmental...

Some ecosystems undergo abrupt transitions to a new regime after passing a tipping point in an exogenous stressor, for example lakes shifting from a clear to turbid ‘eutrophic’ state in response to nutrient-enrichment. Metrics-based resilience indicators have been developed as early warning signals of these shifts but have not always proved reliabl...

We explore the evolutionary nature of interactions between government policy, farm decision-making and ecosystem services in Shucheng County, Anhui Province, 1950–2015. Analyses of ecological, social and economic trends are complemented by interviews with local farmers. Since the Household Responsibility System started in 1980, there has been a tra...

Lake biodiversity is an incomplete indicator of exogenous forcing insofar as it ignores underlying deformations of community structure. Here we seek a proxy for deformation in a network of diatom assemblages comprising 452 species in 273 lakes across China. We test predictions from network theory that nodes of similar type will tend to self-organis...

We present the first quantitative reconstruction of palaeofloods using lake sediments for the UK and show that for a large catchment in NW England the cluster of devastating floods from 1990 to present is without precedent in this 558‐year palaeo‐record. Our approach augments conventional flood magnitude and frequency (FMF) analyses with continuous...

Chapter 2 makes the case for using systems thinking as a guiding perspective for TEEBAgriFood’s development of a comprehensive Evaluation Framework for the eco-agri-food system. Many dimensions of the eco-agri-food system create complex analytical and policy challenges. Systems thinking allows better understanding and forecasting of the outcomes of...

Shaping social-ecological systems towards sustainable, desirable and equitable futures is often hampered by complex human-natural feedbacks, emergence and nonlinearities. Consequently, the future of systems vulnerable to collapse is uncertain under plausible trajectories of environmental change, socioeconomic development and decision-making. We dev...

Agricultural intensification has significantly increased yields and fed growing populations across the planet, but has also led to considerable environmental degradation. In response an alternative process of ‘Sustainable Intensification’ (SI), whereby food production increases while environmental impacts are reduced, has been advocated as necessar...

Chapter 2 makes the case for using systems thinking as a guiding perspective for TEEBAgriFood’s development of a comprehensive Evaluation Framework for the eco-agri-food system. Many dimensions of the eco-agri-food system create complex analytical and policy challenges. Systems thinking allows better understanding and forecasting the outcomes of po...

The planetary boundaries framework provides a novel way to conceptualise the environmental limits of human actions at the global scale. Present efforts to downscale the concept are helping to raise awareness of regional biophysical thresholds, highlight the importance of local ecological stewardship and match the scales of national and regional gov...

Coastal Bangladesh has experienced social and economic progress over the last 30 years. Rising average income, literacy levels and health outcomes have occurred, often by developing local ecosystem services such as agriculture and fisheries. At the same time, other ecosystem services such as water availability and quality and land stability have de...

Where ecosystem processes and human livelihoods are intimately linked, within a social-ecological system, feedback mechanisms and thresholds may combine to deliver rapid changes in key processes and conditions. The science of ‘systems’ and the related ‘resilience-thinking’ for management offer the best means to address the challenge of anticipating...

The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issues and controversies underpinning the evaluation of the nexus between the agri-food sector, biodiversity and ecosystem services and externalities including human health impacts from agriculture on a global scale. It argues the need for a ‘systems thinki...

Conference poster

This study makes a first attempt to operationalize the safe operating space concept at a regional scale by considering the complex dynamics (e.g. non-linearity, feedbacks, and interactions) within a systems dynamic model (SD). We employ the model to explore eight ‘what if’ scenarios based on well-known challenges (e.g. climate change) and current p...

Global environmental change presents a clear need for improved leading indicators of critical transitions, especially those that can be generated from compositional data and that work in empirical cases. Ecological theory of community dynamics under environmental forcing predicts an early replacement of slowly-replicating and weakly-competitive ‘ca...

Policy-making in social-ecological systems increasingly looks to iterative, evolutionary approaches that can address the inherent complexity of interactions between human wellbeing, provision of goods, and the maintenance of ecosystem services. Here, we show how the analysis of available time-series in tropical delta regions over past decades can p...

Tropical delta regions are at risk of multiple threats including relative sea level rise and human alterations, making them more and more vulnerable to extreme floods, storms, surges, salinity intrusion, and other hazards which could also increase in magnitude and frequency with a changing climate. Given the environmental vulnerability of tropical...

Coupled social and ecological systems need to be understood from a dynamic perspective in order to operationalise complexity concepts, such as tipping points, for sustainable ecosystem management. In this study, we strive to achieve this type of conceptual understanding through the analysis of the relationships (e.g. strength, nonlinearity) between...

Estuaries hold major economic potential due their strategic location, close to seas and inland waterways, thereby supporting intense economic activity. The increasing pace of human development in coastal deltas over the past five decades has also strained local resources and produced extensive changes across both social and ecological systems. The...

Deltaic systems are among the most dynamic and productive environments on Earth and many have a high population density. Deltas play a central role in food and water security but are increasingly facing hazards such as submergence, riverine and coastal flooding, and coastal erosion. This paper synthesizes efforts of the Belmont Forum Deltas project...

UN Science Brief on Achieving SDGs for Deltas

China is undergoing unprecedented social and ecological shifts, a harbinger of similar changes that will unfold in developing nations over coming decades. Many of China's degraded environments represent a new normal. Acknowledging this reality will allow societies to make informed decisions that recognize the undervalued costs of environment degrad...

Tropical delta regions experience complex population dynamics, which are strongly influenced by socio-economic and environmental factors. They are subject to increasing pressure from relative sea-level rise, and because of human alterations they are becoming more and more vulnerable to extreme floods, storms, surges, and salinity intrusion, hazards...

Coupled social and ecological systems need to be understood from a dynamic perspective in order to operationalise complexity concepts, such as tipping points, for sustainable ecosystem management. In this study, we strive to achieve this type of conceptual understanding through the analysis of the relationships (e.g. strength, nonlinearity) between...

Coupled social and ecological systems need to be understood from a dynamic perspective in order to operationalise complexity concepts, such as tipping points, for sustainable ecosystem management. In this study, we strive to achieve this type of conceptual understanding through the analysis of the relationships (e.g. strength, nonlinearity) between...

While the concept of the Anthropocene reflects the past and present nature, scale and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth System, its true significance lies in how it can be used to guide attitudes, choices, policies and actions that influence the future. Yet, to date much of the research on the Anthropocene has focused on interpreting past and...

Social-ecological systems (SES) are complex, dynamic systems with strong interdependencies between their ecological components and the social actors that depend upon and shape them. They are characterised by resilience, multiple stable states and adaptive capacity. These characteristics vary across space and time as does the supply of the ecosystem...

The 'Anthropocene' concept provides a conceptual framework that encapsulates the current global situation in which society has an ever-greater dominating influence on Earth System functioning. Simulation models used to understand earth system dynamics provide early warning, scenario analysis and evaluation of environmental management and policies....

Appropriate integration of remote sensing technologies into ecosystem services concepts and practices leads to potential practical benefits for the protection of biodiversity and the promotion of sustainable use of Earth's natural assets. The last decade has seen the rapid development of research efforts on the topic of ecosystem services, which ha...

Understanding social-ecological system dynamics is a major research priority for sustainable management of landscapes, ecosystems and resources. But the lack of multi-decadal records represents an important gap in information that hinders the development of the research agenda. Without improved information on the long-term and complex interactions...

Poverty alleviation linked to agricultural intensification has been achieved in many regions but there is often only limited understanding of the impacts on ecological dynamics. A central need is to observe long term changes in regulating and supporting services as the basis for assessing the likelihood of sustainable agriculture or ecological coll...

This study takes an historical approach in order to establish how the form and function of the social-eco-logical system that represents the Bangladesh south-wes-tern coastal zone has changed over recent decades. Time series data for a range of ecosystem services and drivers are analysed to define the range of trends, the presence of change points,...

Understanding social-ecological system dynamics is a major research priority for sustainable management of landscapes, ecosystems and resources. But the lack of multi-decadal records represents an important gap in information that hinders the development of the research agenda. Without improved information on the long-term and complex interactions...

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)'s annual Medals and Awards recognise achievements in researching, communicating and teaching a wide range of geographical knowledge. The speeches and citations are a record of the ceremony of 2014 with comments by Hans Rosling and Professors Geoffrey Boulton, Susan J Smith, Uma Kothari and John Dearing. The...

Humanity faces a major global challenge in achieving wellbeing for all, while simultaneously ensuring that the biophysical processes and ecosystem services that underpin wellbeing are exploited within scientifically informed boundaries of sustainability. We propose a framework for defining the safe and just operating space for humanity that integra...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect evolving attitudes in adapting to sea-level rise by taking a systems approach and recognizing that multiple responses exist to achieve a less hazardous coast.

* Priority question exercises are becoming an increasingly common tool to frame future agendas in conservation and ecological science. They are an effective way to identify research foci that advance the field and that also have high policy and conservation relevance. * To date, there has been no coherent synthesis of key questions and priority re...

Ecosystems are subjected to a range of perturbations that have the potential to induce relatively sharp transitions in states. These can be referred to as regime shifts or critical transitions. They may be driven by perturbations that vary over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from responses to deforestation within a small field to resp...

Historical and documentary records from the Petit Lac d’Annecy, indicate that human activities have been the dominant ‘geomorphic process’ shaping the catchment during the late Holocene, with deforestation, agriculture and artificial drainage profoundly affecting both the pace and spatial distribution of soil erosion. The impact of past climatic ch...

This study explores the integration of ecosystem services and climate change adaptation in development plans for coastal wetlands in Bangladesh. A new response framework for adaptation is proposed, based on an empirical analysis and consultations with stakeholders, using a modified version of the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) framew...