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For each variables, elements, or themes provide two indictors and measures that provide evidence regarding whether and social ecology system is functioning
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Sure! Here are five critical elements for the sustainability, resilience, and well-being of the human ecosystem:
1. Biodiversity: Preserving a diverse range of plant and animal species helps maintain ecosystem balance, resilience, and overall health.
2. Conservation: Protecting natural resources, such as forests, water bodies, and land, ensures their sustainable use and availability for future generations.
3. Social Equity: Promoting fairness, justice, and equal access to resources and opportunities for all individuals and communities is essential for a sustainable and flourishing human ecosystem.
4. Renewable Energy: Transitioning to clean and renewable energy sources reduces reliance on fossil fuels, mitigates climate change impacts, and promotes long-term sustainability.
5. Education and Awareness: Promoting environmental education and raising awareness about sustainable practices empower individuals to make informed choices and actively contribute to the well-being of the human ecosystem.
These elements work together to create a more sustainable, resilient, and flourishing human ecosystem.
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All these concepts are well-defined and precisely described. Their societal and environmental implications are at the heart of humanity's concerns: poverty, natural resources, human development, aging populations, social security, pensions, migratory fluxes... Obviously, all these questions arise in completely opposite ways depending on whether we place ourselves on the side of developed countries or of developing countries, which is not without creating tensions at the interfaces. Sometimes these become unbearable to such an extent that they lead to real crises or presage of future redoubtable imbalances. The subsidiary question would be: how can we reconcile, balance, and cooperate to design and promote a reliable common future, for all people on the planet? Let's think together on this nagging issue at the same time fascinating.
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Dear Doctor
Go To
Human population growth and the demographic transition
John Bongaarts
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Oct 27; 364(1532): 2985–2990.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0137
"ABSTRACT
The world and most regions and countries are experiencing unprecedentedly rapid demographic change. The most obvious example of this change is the huge expansion of human numbers: four billion have been added since 1950. Projections for the next half century expect a highly divergent world, with stagnation or potential decline in parts of the developed world and continued rapid growth in the least developed regions. Other demographic processes are also undergoing extraordinary change: women's fertility has dropped rapidly and life expectancy has risen to new highs. Past trends in fertility and mortality have led to very young populations in high fertility countries in the developing world and to increasingly older populations in the developed world. Contemporary societies are now at very different stages of their demographic transitions.
Global population growth will continue for decades, reaching around 9.2 billion in 2050 and peaking still higher later in the century. The demographic drivers of this growth are high fertility in parts of the South, as well as declining mortality and momentum. This large expansion in human numbers and of the accompanying changes in the age structure will have multiple consequences for society, the economy and the environment."
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I’m practically convinced that ‘landesque capital’ and ‘infrastructure’ are the same thing. Am I wrong?
I’ve searched for literature that explores the distinction and relationship between these two concepts, but found very little. Can anyone point me to scholars or published works that discuss the relationship between these two terms?
Some background:
In their editors’ introduction to their book, Landesque Capital: The Historical Ecology of Enduring Landscape Modifications, Thomas Håkansson and Mats Widgren use the word ‘infrastructure’ only once, in this passage, where they distinguish infrastructure from landesque capital. They write:
“Where, between the intake and the final distribution of water on the field through furrows, sprinklers, or drip irrigation plastic tubes, does the canal change from being infrastructure to becoming landesque capital? It is perhaps because of this difficult distinction that concepts such as landesque capital have seldom been used for the most capital-intensive landscapes of the world, such as the human-controlled deltas in the Netherlands or China. Needless to say, the engineered landscapes of these large, human-controlled deltas represent huge investments in fixed and immovable capital in the built environment, but can hardly be reduced to landesque capital alone.”
To which, I want to ask: Why not? Håkansson and Widgren write (‘needless to say’) as if the distinction between landesque capital and infrastructure is self-evident, yet this passage also poses a question that’s very difficult to answer: where does the boundary lie within a continuous structure (and flow) that supposedly is clearly ‘infrastructure’ at one end (the canal), but, equally clearly, ‘landesque capital’ at the other end (the furrows of an agricultural field)?
Håkansson and Widgren’s book applies a working definition of landesque capital as ‘enduring landscape modifications’, but I want to understand why one should accept that a container port, a hydro-electric dam or a nuclear power station are not ‘enduring modifications of landscape’ in the same way that an irrigation canal or agricultural terrace are accepted to be.
In the papers I’ve explored so far, the two terms (infrastructure and landesque capital) are quite often used side-by-side when discussing anthropogenic landscapes. It’s sometimes possible to discern an unspoken, implicit logic behind the reason for using one term rather than another in a given sentence—but this reasoning is not explained, and I think we ought to examine it.
It seems to me that landesque capital and infrastructure function the same way: they both serve to enhance the utility, productivity and value of land; they invest current flows of labour (and other inputs) and ‘bank’ them, so as to make future work easier, more efficient, and more productive; they both serve to underpin social systems and the production and consumption of essential goods and services; they are products of collective work and are intimately connected to societal institutions.
Hence this post to the ResearchGate hive mind. Am I right or wrong? What am I missing? If I’m right, what are the implications?
I’m interested in your thoughts about infrastructure, landesque capital, enduring landscape modifications, and anthropogenic landscapes. And I’d like to be referred to works in which these terms are discussed and defined, and distinguished or used interchangeably.
I’m looking forward to reading your replies!
Kind regards,
Dominic.
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What an unhelpful set of responses you have gotten to this question. In my view, landesque capital and infrastructure are related conceptually but are not the same thing. They are privileged in different approaches to and notions of what development means. ‘Infrastructure’ (capital ‘i’) almost always refers simply to built or engineered modernisation or ‘improvement’ to the environment / technical support systems for development, often (but not always – see for example ‘public health infrastructure’ or ‘sanitation infrastructure’) to address ostensible ‘needs’ such as intensified production (irrigation canals) or connect markets (roads). Landesque capital, in contrast, I see as more of a framework for understanding how a 'productive' landscape is constructed, rooted in an approach more informed by landscape and human ecology and strongly integrates consideration of social institutions, human labour, and creativity in histories of landscape change. It reflects an historical perspective and emphasises the social and co-produced nature of landscape and has temporal considerations that one does not associate with mainstream discussions around ‘infrastructure’.  TLDR, I think landesque capital is a more inclusive framework for conceptualising productive landscapes that is accommodating of what we might think of as extensively as well as intensively produced forms of infrastructure and takes temporality and human ecological relationships into account. I hope this reflection is helpful.
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Hello there,
i hoping you might be able to help me with a reference for the idea that linear thinking is not a good way to manage social-ecological systems?
thanks
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ok, thanks Ilan, i'll have a read :)
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Dear colleagues,
I would like to create a repository with documents, reports and scientific articles that speak about COVID-19 and Circular Economy. The aim is to try to draw future potential scenario, defining research questions and in general have a panoramic on the phenomenon.
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Yes, the proposal of issues for the creation of a repository with documents, reports and scientific articles on the issues of the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic and the circular economy is a very good idea. The issue of connecting the key issues of the Coronavirus pandemic and the circular economy is an important and developmental topic. The Coronavirus pandemic, due to the economic recession triggered in 2020, created the conditions for the pro-environmental transformation of the classic growth, brown economy of excess into a sustainable, green, zero-emission economy of zero growth and a closed loop. Restrictions in the provision of services caused by the introduction of lockdowns and recommended home quarantine, the decline in production caused by intermittent international supply and supply chains, etc. occurred most strongly during the first wave of the pandemic. A significant reduction in the scale of economic activity in many companies and enterprises in the second quarter of 2020 also resulted in a reduction in the level of environmental pollution and in some economic areas and urban agglomerations. During this period, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could also be recorded. However, the scale of the decline in environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions was too short-lived and too small to slow the global warming process. Therefore, during the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic, there were opportunities to significantly accelerate the process of pro-environmental transformation of the economy, increase the scale of implementation of sustainable development goals in companies and enterprises, increase the level of general social pro-environmental awareness of citizens, carry out a pro-ecological transformation of the sector energy, development of electromobility, etc. However, as part of the interventionist, anti-crisis public aid programs for companies and enterprises launched from March 2020, pro-environmental objectives were not taken into account. As part of the anti-crisis state interventionism, and costly programs of financial support for business with funds from the state finance system, the pro-environmental state intervention has been forgotten. Therefore, the anti-crisis measures of the socio-economic policy ignored threats to the development of civilization that are even greater than the pandemic, which are the accelerating process of global warming and the growing risk of a global climate catastrophe in the next several dozen years. During the pandemic, many companies and enterprises decided to carry out recovery and development restructuring processes, improve the economic efficiency of their business, optimize the use of limited resources, etc. Unfortunately, due to the lack of pro-environmental state intervention, few business entities decided to take real steps in the field of pro-environmental reforms. Some companies, enterprises and financial institutions, noticing the growing pro-environmental awareness of society, add the issues of sustainability, implementation of the goals of sustainable development, pro-ecological, green economic activity, environmental social responsibility, principles of circular economy to advertising campaigns presenting the entity's product and service offer and promoting the mission and strategy companies, enterprises, financial institutions, etc. However, the scale of actually implemented pro-environmental activities in business is often much smaller than the image of these activities presented in advertising campaigns. Therefore, during the pandemic, there were opportunities for an interventionist, pro-environmental transformation of the classical economy into a sustainable circular economy. The possibilities that arose in this matter during the Coronavirus pandemic, unfortunately, have not been used.
Best wishes,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
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Socio-ecological production landscape, its resilience and sustainability
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This list of scientific contributions contributed interesting criteria to this discussion. I hope it is useful to you Dr Jhoanna Santiago.
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I need to map functions, relationships, feedbacks of a complex social-ecological system in a village community scale. Can anybody suggest what open source tool can be use to map and analyse the such dynamics related to multiple actors in different time scales. Thanks
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Hi Dineth,
You can use ArcGIS as it is open source. Also, you can use R or Jupiter notebook for different mappings.
Cheers
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Socio-ecological resilience refers to the attributes of resistance and recovery that social-ecological system manifests when confronted with shocks or disturbances.
Ecosystem resilience is a concept applies to ecosystems.
Except for the different systems, what other differences do they have?
Especially in the measurement and applications, thanks for your kind reply.
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This is the problem with jargon and buzzwords: The three named phrases have been used to mean anything which authors want them to mean. The critical error, though, is applying ecosystem concepts to society, which leads to dangerous viewpoints of resilience http://www.urbanresilienceresearch.net/2016/04/20/how-resilient-is-resilience
Here are more nuanced approaches:
Deliberately moving beyond the socio-called socio-ecological / social-ecological / socio-environmental / social-environmental / CHANS approaches--which again leads to the questions "What is the difference?" and "What do they actually mean?"
Perhaps it is time to move beyond resilience?
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I am wondering if it is easy to combine elements of the Multilevel Perspective on transitions and the Social-Ecological Systems framework. Who knows fruitful combinations for studying transitions in or energie transition or nature conservation/restoration?
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Combining them could be based on a multi-scale framework of SES. One starting point for looking at this implementation is the Multiscale Ecosystem Framework (MEF) explained in https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1387&context=nrc_faculty_pubs
and Chapter 29 in Commons Handbook
A combination of MLP and SES is being applied by my research team in energy issues in Colombia as a PhD research.
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Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is viewed as "native science" developed across generations in particular localities and within given social-ecological systems. Such a knowledge system may act as a livelihood strategy and is also intended to positively contribute to biodiversity conservation. Given that biodiversity losses continue unabated even where TEK may exist, its relevance/impacts are questionable. In that case, several pertinent questions arise despite status of biodiversity being dependent on several area-specific factors. For instance: 1) Is TEK system reliable to help conserve biodiversity? 2) Is it sustainable? ......Please feel free and give your opinion and where possible empirical evidence/publications in support of your assertions.
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For sustainability in the social - ecological system, a balance needs to be met. However, biodiversity is often lost because of imbalances in the nexus. Give an opinion on whether economic growth through anthropogenic activities largely drives biodiversity losses more than others.
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Many researchers use scenario planning as a way to explore alternative futures with citizens, but how far ahead should people be asked to consider? Too far ahead and the problems under consideration become subject to the SEP engine of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's series (Somebody Else's Problem). Too close and panic may ensue, or at least fear-driven System 1 responses. What is the 'sweet spot' of both personal stake and cognitive capacity? Are there demographic or cultural differences in temporal thinking and risk perceptions? Do you have an example of a successful scenario planning exercise, and can share your time horizon and rationale? Or do you have a reference to recommend that explores this question? Thanks in advance.
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Thanks, Richard and Andrew.
Richard - I think time always feels so different looking back than looking forward, but I don't think we ever learn from that experience to do anything but discount the future. I think it is a solid suggestion, however, to anchor scenarios in an event rather than a time: i.e. when sea level rises by X amount, rather than in year Y. This may also get past some of the challenges in setting year Y without wide uncertainty bars.
Has anyone else found the sweet spot, or have clever ways to establish it? In spatial analysis there is a rule that you choose a raster cell size at least half (in each direction) of the smallest thing you want to be able to resolve. Is there a temporal corollary for 'resolving' the future.
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Dear all, I am going to ask a difficult question. I am writing about governance of social systems. Particularly, I am looking at the structure of governance (ie actors, power relations rules). I conceive governance as the `management´ or regulating structure. Namely, the governance structure is what regulates and shapes the processes within specific social-ecological systems (e.g. bioenergy systems, food systems etc.). I would like to explore the literature on systems thinking for management which is the literature where the methodology I use has been mostly used. I know that the management literature focuses on organizations. However, what I need is some inspiration/knowledge of the micro to expand to the macro level (i.e. systems governance).
I am not sure whether I have been clear enough. If you need clarifications please ask and if you have any suggestion, thank you. Very much appreciated.
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In view of your reply, was thinking some recent work we engaged with innovation ecosystems thinking in which we also relate to the ecological and material, maybe relevant, see
and see this one from Domenico:
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Hi everyone, I might be approaching the field of socio-ecological systems to write the final paper of my PhD. I would like to get an idea of a super MUST-READ literature to get an overview of the approach and ideally a couple of case studies.
To narrow down the search, I am a political and social scientist (somewhere in between ;) ) and I study bioenergy development from a triple bottom line perspective (socio, economic and environmental sustainability). I have been using qualitative system dynamics (i.e. causal mapping) and systems thinking in my previous papers and I am now into the CAS literature. I have been advised to look into socio-ecological systems as a good example of CAS and quite related to my theoretical and methodological framework.
Thanks for any help you can provide
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Everything by Ostrom and Colleagues is a must-read, some are classics.
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I am planning to include "risk behaviour and time preference of smallholder farmers" as factors that affect their decision to adopt long-term improved soil and water conservation practices in Ethiopia. For this I need to construct simple questions which are easy to be understood by farmers. If you have any idea, please, forward it.
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SES framework is designed for different ecological and social systems and applied so far to forests, irrigation systems, national parks, pastures, etc.
We are interested to diagnose a forest landscape restoration program that has been carried out for the last 40+ years. The program has shown successes and failures that varied between intervention sites. We proposed there are ecological, social, economic and policy factors that constrain and favor the program and created the variation across sites. Because some of the places have achieved developing good forest ecosystems while others have failed. We are going to collect ecological, social, economic, policy related data. We will have experiments regarding the ecological factors.
We would like to learn from your experience if you have suggestion on how we can best aggregate and analyze these large data?
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Sounds like a very interesting (yet very complex) project.
What methods you can use for data aggregation and analysis you can use will first depend on the overarching framework need to structure your approach. As you mentioned SES, you are probably aware of Ostrom's SES framework. With its focus on variables (or factors), and interactions between them, it provide a point of departure for structuring and formalizing your data.
Second, once you you have an overview of your system variables – and once know on which variables you have data available, and on which you don't – you can look for relations between the factors (ecological, social, etc.) and your management outcomes. The approach here will depend heavily on your variables and what your outcome is. For example, if you are trying to look at how ecosystem services provided by different parts of the landscape are related to different factors, you can think about hypothesizing social-ecological production functions as discussed in Reyers et al. (2013). To distinguish effects, you will most probably need a statistical model involving several factors. If I understood correctly, you have a large number of factors, so be extremely cautious about looking for correlation, you will probably get a ton of nonsensical/spurious ones. Because of that, GLMs might not do the trick. You might need some more "sophisticated" techniques. (Bayesian) hierarchical models come to mind, but maybe GLMMs or GAMs will work. You could also train classifiers (naïve Bayes, or even a neural network), to see if they are able to predict (that is, "classify your sites into") different outcomes. Of course, as with the other approaches, you will have to split your data into training and test sets.
As you see, there are a lot of things you could do (and sorry for flinging all of this at you) – but depending on your data and your research objectives, some might be better suited to your needs (and some might be a bad choice).
Refs
Reyers, B., Biggs, R., Cumming, G. S., Elmqvist, T., Hejnowicz, A. P., & Polasky, S. (2013). Getting the measure of ecosystem services: a social–ecological approach. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 11(5), 268–273. https://doi.org/10.1890/120144
Ostrom, E. (2009). A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science, 325(5939), 419–22. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1172133
Schlüter, M., Hinkel, J., Bots, P. W. G., & Arlinghaus, R. (2014). Application of the SES framework for model-based analysis of the dynamics of social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05782-190136
Vogt, J. M., Epstein, G. B., Mincey, S. K., Fischer, B. C., & McCord, P. (2015). Putting the “E” in SES: unpacking the ecology in the Ostrom social-ecological system framework. Ecology and Society, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07239-200155
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I am working on bioenergy development and triple bottom line sustainability. I have had a focus on the processes of bioenergy development (for instance, how and what drives investments, what and how drives the use of and production of specific biomass, the increase or decrease of CO2 emissions, biodiversity etc., how all this links to social acceptance or opposition) and how these processes interlink. I am now at the stage to investigate how these processes could be governed to foster triple bottom line sustainability and I am adopting a governance approach. I have read several papers on local governance, climate change governance, polycentric and multi-level
I am now at the stage to investigate how these processes could be governed to foster triple bottom line sustainability and I am adopting a governance approach. I have read several papers on local governance, climate change governance, polycentric and multi-level governance, natural resources governance, etc. But I am missing something, probably something more general that can describe governance from a more theoretical point of view. 
If you have any suggestion, I'd be glad to check it out.
Thank you very much
Bianca
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Hi Bianca,
here is what I found on "governance" in my library. Quite different approaches, hopefully including one thats is helpful to you.
Prince, Russell: Policy transfer, consultants and the geographies of governance. In: Progress in Human Geography 36 (2). 188–203.
The work of Russell Prince is usually conceptually advanced, but I haven't read that article.
Zimmermann, Karsten (2009): Changing Governance – Evolving KnowledgeScapes. How we might think of a planning-relevant politics of local knowledge. In: disP 178 (3). 56-66
Lowndes, Vivien (2005): SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED . . . How institutions change (and stay the same) in local governance. In: Policy Studies 26 (3/4). 291-309.
Rhodes, R.A.W. (1996): The New Governance: Governing without Government. In: Political Studies XLIV. 652-667.
Steurer, Reinhard (2013): Disentangling governance: a synoptic view of regulation by government, business and civil society. In: Policy Sci 46. 387-410.
Haas, Peter M. (2010): The global spreading of ideas. Social learning and the evolution of multilateral environmental governance. In: WZB-Mitteilungen 127. 40-42.
Van Wezemael, Joris (2008): The contribution of assemblage theory and minor politics for democratic network governance. In: Planning Theory 7 (2). 165-185.
As I work on policy mobility and especially on policy translation, I use meta-theoretical approaches that somehow challenge the governance literature. Often drawing on Michel Foucault, Assemblage Theories (Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Manuel DeLanda) and Actor-Network-Theories (Michel Callon, John Law, Bruno Latour). This literature often focuses on the processes of mobilising and re-embedding policies in specific contexts. Maybe this is what you miss:
Gottweis, Herbert (2003): Theoretical strategies of post-structuralist policy analysis: towards an analytics of government. In: Maarten A. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (eds.): Deliberative policy analysis. Understanding governance in the network society. Cambridge, UK, New York, USA: Cambridge University Press (Theories of institutional design). 247-265.
Law, John (1992): Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. In: Systems Practice 5 (4). 379-393.
Lendvai, Noémi and Paul Stubbs (2009): Assemblages, translation, and intermediaries in South East Europe. Rethinking transnationalism and social policy. In: European Societies 11 (5). 673-695.
Mukhtarov, Farhad (2014): Rethinking the travel of ideas: policy translation in the water sector. In: Policy & Politics 42 (1). 71-88.
Czarniawska, Barbara and Guje Sevón (2005): Translation is a vehicle, imitation its motor, and fashion sits at the wheel. In: Barbara Czarniawska und Guje Sevón (eds.): Global ideas. How ideas, objects and practices travel in the global economy. Malmö, Sweden, Herndon, VA: Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press (Advances in organization studies, vol. 13). 7-12.
Freeman, Richard (2009): What is 'translation'? In: Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice 5 (4). 429-447.
McCann, Eugene (2011): Urban Policy Mobilities and Global Circuits of Knowledge: Toward a Research Agenda. In: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101 (1). 107-130.
McFarlane, Colin (2011): The city as a machine for learning. In: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (3). 360-376.
Prince, Russell (2010): Policy transfer as policy assemblage: making policy for the creative industries in New Zealand. In: Environment and Planning A 42 (1). 169-186.
Stein, Christian; Michel, Boris; Glasze, Georg and Robert Pütz (2015): Learning from failed policy mobilities: Contradictions, resistances and unintended outcomes in the transfer of "Business Improvement Districts" to Germany. In: European Urban and Regional Studies. 1-15.
Stone, Diane (2012): Transfer and translation of policy. In: Policy Studies 33 (6). 483-499.
Temenos, Cristina und Eugene McCann (2013): Geographies of Policy Mobilities. In: Geography Compass 7 (5). 344-357.
If you need some more details, don't hesitate to ask!
Kind regards,
Moritz
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Social-ecological systems, climate change, forest, local communities, rainforest.
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I suggest read the articles published by A. Townsend. He has interesting synthesis. We explored relationships between variation in annual precipitation and tropical forest biogeochemistry (see Campo & Merino 2016, Global Change Biology; Campo 2016, Environmental Research Letters).
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Hi all, besides biodiversity, soil stability and carbon fluxes, which other indicators of chronic disturbance in dryland systems could enable the establishment of a robust and adaptive monitoring framework?
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Hi John,
I would suggest the methodological toolbox of a "Rapid Ecosystem Functioning Assessment" (REFA), as published by Sebastian Meyer from Munich and his colleagues:
We already tested some of these methods - such as the artificial caterpillars as a rapid method to assess natural pest control - in West African rangelands. The good thing is, that due to the quick&easy assessment methods, you get a more holistic picture of how disturbance regimes affect multiple aspects of ecosystem functionality and ecosystem service provision.
Best regards
Anja
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We really appreciate your opinion by taking a very few minutes to complete this online survey.
The 15th of December 2016 we release the second round of this survey. This new version is the result of gathering and analyzing the expert opinions of nearly 60 researchers from all over the world. With all this feedback, we have improved the list of candidate variables to be proposed as ESEFVs (Essential Social-Ecological Functional Variables). However, we still need your expert knowledge to make progress on the list configuration. Please, check, punctuate and comment the new list [the link is below].
Learn more about the E&SEFT Project in functionaltypes.caescg.org.
Thank you for your time and help!
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Hi Manuel
I found this article really useful, specially in thinking about practical examples of some of the "tenets", if you wish, of social-ecological systems. 
Liu et al 2007
Some other more recent work by the same group goes in detail about some of these issues:
Cheers
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I am trying to analyse factors that determine people's attitudes towards a species for which I conducted semi structured interviews across a landscape. I conducted my interviews in 27 villages and within each village, 20% to 30% of the respondents were interviewed. Questions included attitude statements which ideally give an attitude score. Along with these we also collected data on variables(both categorical and continuous) at the scale of the respondent and the village. I am interested to use structural equations modelling to look at the factors and the relationship among factors that determine attitudes. I wanted to know if people have used this to analyse such kind of data and if so then I would like to know:
1. References from where I can start (the basics)
2. Can I use categorical variables for this analysis?
3. How can I do a SEM in R?
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Hi Chandrima, this is out of your question, but alternatively, maybe you can use systems dynamics modelling analyze your interview data.
First, use the variables, or the topic variables, that structured your interview to develop a causal loop diagram (CLD) (Vensim software). The CLD wil be a qualitative model (map) that might help you conceptualise the relationship between variables you had surveyed, in a socio-ecological systems perspective. Or, to draw the relationshiop from existing socio-ecological systems framework (which can guide the categorization of variables you surveyed). 
Once you have a CLD, you can use the Stella/iThink software, to convert the CLD to develop a Stock-and-flow Diagram (SFD) in the software, to quantitatively model the problem. The software will allow a drag-and-drop inteface that you can toggle from diagram, to the differential equations that underlie the SFD you built. You then can use the survey data to parameterize the socio-ecological model/problem that you have constructed, to test the sensitivity and validitiy of the model, and perhaps run the desired scenario.
It is much more straightforward that using R. Yet, later, you still can convert/export the underlying mathematical equations of your Stella/iThink model into R format. (Please see the link).
To help you decide please check the links (I hope it is working), and these books below if you want to try this path.
  • Sterman, JD 2000, Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world, Irwin McGraw-Hill, Boston.
  • Ford, A 2010, Modeling the environment, 2nd edn, Island Press, London.
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It seems the jury is still out on resilience towards adaptive capacity or adaptive capacity towards resilience (in social-ecological systems). Do you see resilience as a subset of adaptive capacity or vice versa  (which seems the conventional wisdom ). Can you provide any papers in these respects?  
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Some may feel I speak out of turn here.  It is not necessarily a good idea to rely totally upon one dictionary for the final word regarding the definitions of words which are being used as terms within an academic discourse.  Much like a legal document you often have a desire to attach very specific meanings to your use of certain words in a particular communication and like a legal document perhaps it would be best to provide your own 'Definition of Terms' section near the start of the discussion.
In my field which is in general dealing with the social and economic aspects of society I would tend to use 'resilience' to signify 'the capacity to recover from disruption', whereas 'the capacity to adapt' would be signified by using the term 'adaptability'.  Adaptability is the capacity to respond through modified behaviours to repeated disruptions of a particular class such that the effects of those disruptions tend to be ameliorated in the event of future occurrences.
From which you can see that if I was to rely upon Websters, and perhaps even the Oxford, as my authority my exact intended meaning might be understood inconsistently between two of my readers or may have been seen to be ambiguous or vague.  It is always best to be specific about what your intended meaning is and to put limits upon it by confirming up front how you intend to use an important term.
Is the case of these terms' usage in ecology which has given rise to this discussion perhaps more to do with etymology than with concepts?  Or a bit of both perhaps?
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The answer in a rural context will be helpful.
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Dear Popular,
You may find this thesis useful for socio-ecological perspectives on adaptation.
Regards,
Irene
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From a series community-based model building activity, I recently identified a relationship between fisher and fish-buyer/collector, which local fishers perceived to be the main reason that they have less control over the fish sale price.
My background is not in social and economics and, therefore, I would be grateful if there is anyone can refer to me studies that demonstrate proxy variables that determines a fish price is considered as 'fair'.
I will use the information to expand and analyse the qualitative model (a causal loop diagram) I built with the fishermen.
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This is a critical issue since fishermen are the poorest in many underdeveloped countries like the Philippines.  They are poor because of less catch due to depleted fish resources, however, the problem in depletion is aggravated by the unfair practices of buying fish landings at very low price.  Or it is not the depleted fish population at all, but simply because the fish is bought at a very low price from the fish landings. You may look at the value chains of the fish species that you wanted to work on and you will see the discrepancies in the price/benefits among fishermen, buyers, traders, vendors, etc. From there you may apply models or whatever tools to recommend equal/fair distribution of wealth from an open access fish resources. Fishermen usually gets around 15 % only of the total value of the product. Another entry is the information on catch per unit effort and the operational expenses of the fishers, which would form as basis for your price determination per kilogram of fish caught by the fishermen.
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i want to know the type of complexity in socio-ecological systems regarding water resources management........
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Please use the following link to find the most important publications for IWRM.
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with respect...
I want to know how can i use system dynamics to analyze resilience of coastal zones that are Under the influences of climate change.......
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Dear Saman
As Prof.Towe said, your question is so opaque. I can't imagine it. Could you please explain your question step by step? Maybe after that, I'll understand your aim.
Thanks
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In many rural areas of "developing countries" small scale agriculturalists (farmers/fishers/herders/...) see the necessity for (financial) investments, they have the capacities (social & human capital like social networks or (traditional) local knowledge) but often not the access to the financial sector to maintain or adapt their practices & lifestyle to changes. I am interested in ways how this gap has been bridged successfully in terms of improving the life of the people (as they desired) while keeping/improving the "natural capital" as well, so increasing the resilience in several dimensions.
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Thank you very much already for the answers! maybe we can keep filling this thread if we find something new. I came across this "database of financial and technical support for inclusive businesses" and thought  it might also be useful to some of you:) http://www.inclusivebusinesshub.org/page/data-of-financial-and-technical-support-for-inclusive-businesses
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that is terrestrial biomes, as classified in the map attached
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Christoph has pointed out the latest and probably the best available - it appears the WWF work is rather out of date. What are you using the information for? Cheers Mark
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I am interested in comparing the learning process and adaptive cycle in the context of cities working together in transnational city networks for climate action. Lee and van de Meene (2012) conceptualized the learning process into three phases (information gathering, adoption, policy change) in their network analysis study. I would like to look further into urban policy change and whether TCNs are a necessary condition to catalyze cities building resilience against sea-level rise. I think a better understanding of the phases of the adaptive cycle would be useful. I would appreciate any assistance.
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Frankly, TCNs are fairly irrelevant, at least in the US.  We're lucky if we can get cities across a state boundary to work together!  I think you can find literature describing how they could work, I have seen very little on them actually working.  Perhaps more fruitful would be an investigation of barriers to them working:  $, language, culture, laws and regulatory regimes...one of the biggest barriers is actually our lack of knowledge about the translation of data to action.  I've tried to provide some thoughts in my recent blogs at www.resilientus.org but these are certainly not validated by experience and are simply my attempt to synthesize both my own experiences and what I've read in the literature. 
The crux of the problem is that we haven't adequately understood community action.  Academia has focused on some inchoate collaborative processes that are poor representations (IMO) of what actually happens.  They pay too much attention to the "horizontal" gathering of information and defining of goals and too little to how (and even if!) these goals are achieved through the "vertical" hierarchies that actually act.
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I am searching a paper on a case of a SES (social-ecological system) that illustrates the human capacity of social learning, enabling deliberate transformation of the SES, for example to a higher scale of governance, thereby possibly increasing resilience. I am looking for an example for any kind of deliberate transformation, e.g. in urban management, fisheries, forest management, protected areas, community building, etc; it doesn’t have to be a governance scale transformation, but ideally a system that undergoes the adaptive cycle phases and where a deliberate transformation led or might lead to increased resilience. Does anyone know of any such case? Thank you.
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Hi Tobias.
Do you know the Cabo Pulmo experience? This is a fisherman community which began to be aware about the beauty and relevance of the coral reef in front of their lands at Baja California. They made of the management to establish a natural protected area and changed their way of life, to do ecotourism. This process has taken around 20 years with a lot of outcomes in the social and ecological systems, as an increasing income to local and regional families because of the tourism and the recovery in around 200% of the fish biomass for fisheries in the region. A lot of mega-projects have been rejected with the civil society action. There is a new configuration of the local governance, joining market of tourism + a federal natural protected area + local people / organization. It is interesting and the results are systematized not only in the biophysical aspects but in the social ones, too.
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Strategic planning is believed to be an approach to plan strategic management that include the sustainability value of ecology, social, economic and governance.
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Dear Yudi,
Please, see the links:
Theories of strategic planning (authored with Jurgen C Schmidt and Martyn Laycock)
STRATEGIC PLANNING THEORY AND PRACTICE by WILLIAM DOW TROTTER
Regards,
Vanessa
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Methods use for calculation of economics of organic farming.
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Can some one suggest me literature on methodological issues related economics of organic farming?
in perspective if Research Methodology there is a specific methodology used for organic farming economic. Depend upon your experimental work in agriculture and time bound system and crop etc.
if you want detail plz sent full detail in which specific system you required in crop pattern, in trading pattern or in envrionmental pattern.
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Conjoint analysis is being widely used in market research.
In regard to the agriculture service delivery sector where limited work has been attempted, can you please provide any methodology or questionnaires on how to perform it?
Thanks.
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Are you thinking more like consultants or agronomists? Something more like transportation and processing? Perhaps marketing support or cooperative marketing boards?
I think methodologies will differ a lot depending on which type of service you're more focused on.
Also, are you more interested in the perspective of the farmers, what services they are aware of and/or make use of, or are you more interested in the perspective of the service providers? If you focus on farmers, perhaps you wouldn't identify challenges that their service providers face in providing those services, but if you focus on the service providers, then perhaps you wouldn't identify services that farmers think they can make good use of but aren't presently offered in their area (for example, support in weighing options across seed varieties for their particular soil and climate conditions).
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I would like to see the link of cognitive behavioral therapy with the socio-economic status of the patients.
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Could you say more about CBT- what are you using it for and in what population? female, male, adults, children, and how are you defining low socio-economic background? It is difficult to answer your questions without much background. Thanks.
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I know concrete example of area-wide coordinated pest management (Ayer 1997, Ravnborg et al. 2000) and some authors in landscape ecology (Bianchi et al. 2006) mention the potential of landscape elements for pest regulation, but I don't know cases of both processes at the same time. Any hint?
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there have been interesting landscape management for pest control long time experiments in Southern France published in French by the INRA, in the seventies and eighties, trying shrubs  and hedges to increase biodiversity as well as field margin management (INRA AVIGNON). In Italy, vineyards have been protected against leaf hoppers by the planting of blackberry shrubs between vines as those also have (another) leafhopper species, controlled earlier by a parasitoid common to both species (Arzone was the main author). There is strip cropping in the cereal producing regions of the United States of America… We have taught all that in Portuguese in the nineties in the frame of a master degree on the management of biological resources. Perhaps  you can use some of these key words and find more texts in English.
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It would be great to start a collaborative network of conversation around the value and innovative ways that social ecological frameworks are being used globally in research. Additionally it would be interesting to hear a number of key strengths, or hurdles you have identified in utilising this framework or ways in which you have made adaptations. Cheers, Alice
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Hi fellow social ecologists and thanks for entering into this conversation and sharing your thoughts, work and resources. This dialogue and your experiences share the great variation and differences in interpretations and applications of social ecological perspectives. For nearly half a century many in the scholarly community and those interested in behaviour change have embraced ecological models for making sense of the transactional nature and patterns of human behaviour, the reciprocal relationship between people and their environment over time, and the complexity of causation (see McLeroy, 1992; Jamner, 2000; Barker, 1968, Wicker, 1979 and Stokols, 2000, 1992, 1996; Sallis, 1997; King, 2002; Glass and McAtee, Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
This is representative of the vast array of professionals including town planners, educators, psychologists, resource managers, academics and even criminologists that are recognising the value in the application of social ecology in their work to help make sense of the the bi-directional transactions between people and place (See Berkes & Folke, 2002; Colding, Folke, & Berkes, 2003; Holt, Spence, Sehn, & Cutumisu, 2008; Peterson, 2010; Sallis et al., 2008; Spence & Lee, 2003; Stokols et al., 2009; Walker, Anderies, Kinzig, & Ryan, 2006).
Nilisha, your link to Jasper Schipperijn (2010) appeared was difficult to follow his research as most of it is written in Danish. I have read a little Jaspers profile and would be keen to connect with him, particularly regarding his interest in children’s health. It also looks like Jasper attended and presented at the 2013 Annual meeting in International Society for Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA) and presented at a symposium where he discussed how to “measure the environment”. His emphasis on “context specific assessment of PA patterns” would very much fit within a social ecological framework I believe (2014).
Catharina, thank-you for the information on “ecosystem health”. Again, this approach appears to address a number of key aspects of social ecology, particularly an emphasis on drawing from multi-disciplinary approaches. In reading the link to Forget/Lebel (2001) I can also appreciate from their writing that the health is understood as more dynamic and holistic in its interpretation. This perspective also opens up the possibility of social ecological systems and the possibility of reciprocity existing where changes within environments or to an individual (eg. age, body composition, physical injury or health) can directly and indirectly impact on their response to behaviour (McGurk & Kolar, 1997). I've added a link to a symposium presentation that I was involved in that may provide additional insight.
Justine, thanks for sharing your perspective of SES focused on sustainability and resilience. It’s interesting that you see it as pertaining to natural resource management, yet as an early childhood specialist I understand these terms as to how they apply and are relevant to young children. Thank-you for your link to the journal of ecology and society, an excellent journal and agree that it has focusses on SES in many of its articles.
Matilda, congratulations on your teams excellent journal publication. It is wonderful to see the emphasis again being placed on exploring experiences and ways of working in order to promote and support transdisciplinary research.
Nesar, thank-you for sharing your work. Your application and interpretation are quite different to the way that I use the social ecological model, but just as valid and integral to the work and research that you do. It demonstrates the degree of applicability of such as system which in your case would be very valuable in supporting and better managing the fishery resources of Old Brahmaputra River, particularly in better understanding the core systems as well as subsystems and their interactions in promoting positive livelihood outcomes.
Kathleen thank-you for your input. It’s interesting that Nesar’s work may in fact compliment and be in a similar area as yours (even in broad terms). Sorry, this is really not my area and I’m out of my depth a bit, and challenged, but in another way can see the multiple applications, interpretations and uses of a SE approach. In referring to your teams excellent work and focus (and by the way I’m jealous that you have a SES analysis group!!!) it is clear that it has a focus on the impact of multiple systems/environments and their impact on interactions and behaviours. I’m wondering whether your team are mainly comprised of those interested in marine research, or whether there are also other disciplines such as psychologists, educators, sociologists etc that would be keen to contribute to your team from different perspectives?
References
Context-specific outdoor time and physical activity among school-children across gender and age: using accelerometers and GPS to advance methods. / Klinker, Charlotte Demant; Schipperijn, Jasper; Kerr, Jacqueline; Ersbøll, Annette Kjær; Troelsen, Jens.
In: Frontiers in Public Health, Vol. 2, 20, 11.03.2014.
Publication: Research - peer-review › Journal article
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Water is our basic need. Most of our body consists of water. Day to day in our lives something is always related to the need for water. Some places have an abundance of water, in some other areas it is very scarce. In the city, most people use ground water for reducing expenses for water, such as for drinking water, washing cars, motorcycles or even for taking a bath. Meanwhile, there is a land subsidence as a natural hazard that should be faced.
Most of forest or catchment areas have been converted to other land use (new settlements, industry areas, etc) in urban areas. The impact is that the cost of water-treatment production is becoming higher and higher. To avoid high expenses, most of urban inhabitants use ground water and this is making land subsidence worse.
Indonesia has thousands small islands and has a similar problem with fresh water. They use rain water as a source of drinking or cooking. They can not desalinate sea water to provide freshwater due to expensive cost production.
Then, is there any hope to solve this situation because water will be scarce in some time, not only in the areas which have scare water, but also will be influence the areas which have an abundance of water.
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This is certainly a massive problem. A whole array of solutions are needed, with each solution helping out to conserve water. In urban areas, stormwater runoff can be reduced by increasing percolation by having more grassy areas and green roofs. Permeable concrete is too expensive ( as of now). natural or construcrted wetlkands can help treat some of the city's municipal wastwater and free that water up for reuse, at least for urban agriculture and other nonpotable uses.
At the basin level, there has to be a restoration of forests and wetlands to the max extent as is possible. Gallery forests along streams and rivers also helps in maintain water quality instream.
However, this requires awareness and action on the part of city officials, water ministry, communities, schools and companies -- it is a multi-stakeholder process.
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I am conducting a meta-analysis on factors influencing hunting success and am looking for data beyond the literature.
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Hi Matt
We have some hunting data for lions in the Okavango Delta from when water was low enough for us to follow them.
Regards
Christiaan
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...sediment type in that coastal area and ratio of sand, silt and clay will play a major role in metal retention around the point and diffuse entry points of the pollutants.