The past 50 years, ecosystems have been altered by humans more than at any other time in recorded history. Learning how to manage feedbacks between ecosystems and humans is vital if we are to move toward a more sustainable world. This article was downloaded from Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print.
The past 50 years, ecosystems have been altered by humans more than at any other time in recorded history. Learning how to manage feedbacks between ecosystems and humans is vital if we are to move toward a more sustainable world. This article was downloaded from Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print.
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The past 50 years, ecosystems have been altered by humans more than at any other time in recorded history. Learning how to manage feedbacks between ecosystems and humans is vital if we are to move toward a more sustainable world. This article was downloaded from Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print.
The past 50 years, ecosystems have been altered by humans more than at any other time in recorded history. Learning how to manage feedbacks between ecosystems and humans is vital if we are to move toward a more sustainable world. This article was downloaded from Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print.
An integrated conceptual framework for long-term socialecological research Scott L Collins, Stephen R Carpenter, Scott M Swinton, Daniel E Orenstein, Daniel L Childers, Ted L Gragson, Nancy B Grimm, J Morgan Grove, Sharon L Harlan, Jason P Kaye, Alan K Knapp, Gary P Kofinas, John J Magnuson, William H McDowell, John M Melack, Laura A Ogden, G Philip Robertson, Melinda D Smith, and Ali C Whitmer Front Ecol Environ 2010; doi:10.1890/100068 This article is citable (as shown above) and is released from embargo once it is posted to the Frontiers e-View site (www.frontiersinecology.org). The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org Please note: This article was downloaded from Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Readers are strongly advised to check the final print version in case any changes have been made. esa esa The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org O ver the past 50 years, ecosystems have been altered by humans more than at any other time in recorded his- tory (Vitousek et al. 1997; Chapin et al. 2010), and those changes have resulted in reciprocal effects on human well- being (MA 2005). Although health and wealth have, on average, improved, in part as a consequence of these ecosystem changes, the social and geographic distribution of benefits to human populations remains uneven. Furthermore, such improvements are often limited by the inability of ecosystem services to keep pace with human demand and unequal opportunity for different people to access these services (MA 2005). Learning how to manage feedbacks between ecosystems and humans is vital if we are to move toward a more sustainable world, in which the health of ecosystems and human well-being are improved and ecosystem services are distributed more equitably for current and future generations. As ecological research expands from site-based science to regional and global scales (Peters et al. 2008), the conceptual scope of ecology must also expand to embrace not only other scientific dis- ciplines, but also the pervasive human dimensions of envi- ronmental structure and change. Every ecosystem on Earth is influenced by human actions (Vitousek et al. 1997; Palmer et al. 2005), and the consensus view now holds that, for many of todays most pressing issues, the environ- ment is best understood and studied as a socialecological system (Liu et al. 2007). As recognition of the importance of socialecological science increases, new interdisciplinary linkages are evolving. Global research programs, such as the International GeosphereBiosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (Steffen et al. 2004; Carpenter and Folke 2006), have driven important advances. Collaborations between physical scientists and biologists have occurred with the advent of regional- and global- scale science, whereas in applied sciences, such as agron- omy and fisheries, collaborations between ecologists and social scientists are more recent. For example, studies on how ecosystem services benefit society formed the core of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005), the first interdisciplinary global assessment of Earths ecosys- tems conducted at the behest of world leaders. Many early advances in socialecological research were driven by coalitions of ecologists and economists (Goulder and CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS An integrated conceptual framework for long-term socialecological research Scott L Collins 1* , Stephen R Carpenter 2 , Scott M Swinton 3 , Daniel E Orenstein 4 , Daniel L Childers 5 , Ted L Gragson 6 , Nancy B Grimm 7 , J Morgan Grove 8 , Sharon L Harlan 9 , Jason P Kaye 10 , Alan K Knapp 11 , Gary P Kofinas 12 , John J Magnuson 2 , William H McDowell 13 , John M Melack 14 , Laura A Ogden 15 , G Philip Robertson 16 , Melinda D Smith 17 , and Ali C Whitmer 18 The global reach of human activities affects all natural ecosystems, so that the environment is best viewed as a socialecological system. Consequently, a more integrative approach to environmental science, one that bridges the biophysical and social domains, is sorely needed. Although models and frameworks for socialecological systems exist, few are explicitly designed to guide a long-term interdisciplinary research program. Here, we present an iterative framework, PressPulse Dynamics (PPD), that integrates the bio- physical and social sciences through an understanding of how human behaviors affect press and pulse dynamics and ecosystem processes. Such dynamics and processes, in turn, influence ecosystem services thereby altering human behaviors and initiating feedbacks that impact the original dynamics and processes. We believe that research guided by the PPD framework will lead to a more thorough understanding of socialecological systems and generate the knowledge needed to address pervasive environmental problems. Front Ecol Environ 2010; doi:10.1890/100068 1 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM * (scollins@sevilleta.unm.edu); refer to WebPanel 1 for the re- maining authors affiliations, in their entirety In a nutshell: There is growing recognition that the environment must be viewed and studied as a socialecological system Various conceptual models have been proposed to character- ize socialecological systems, but new thinking is needed to guide long-term research that links humans with their envi- ronment We describe a new model for integrated socialecological research, the key components of which include environmen- tal and social sciences, press and pulse interactions, and ecosystem services Application of this approach will bridge the social and nat- ural sciences and build a knowledge base that can be used to help solve current and future environmental challenges A framework for socialecological research SL Collins et al. www.frontiersinecology.org The Ecological Society of America Kennedy 1997; Berkes and Folke 1998; Berkes et al. 2003) seeking to understand how institutions and economies solve common-property resource problems (Ostrom 1990; Dietz et al. 2003), and more recently by studies of resiliency in regional socialecological systems (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Walker and Salt 2006). Liu et al. (2007) illus- trated the diversity of approaches that have been applied to site-based socialecological research, while emphasizing the enormous gaps in interdisciplinary science that remain, and the need for new theory that will better integrate concep- tual and empirical research across disciplines. Although research in pure social and biophysical sci- ences must continue, new emphasis and approaches are also needed to understand the dynamic processes that are unique to socialecological systems. Ecosystems are com- posed of numerous species across the trophic spectrum that interact at varying rates and at multiple scales, from which the patterns and dynamics that we observe emerge (Levin 1999). Social systems also self-organize and exhibit scale dependencies, but humans within such systems pos- sess capabilities that qualitatively change these dynamics in important ways (Gibson et al. 2000; Westley et al. 2002). For example, people make forward-looking decisions (ie they act on expectations of the future), generate and respond to abstract perceptions that shape their worlds and their expectations, create feedbacks that act on various time scales over multiple spatial extents, and develop tech- nologies with far-reaching consequences (Westley et al. 2002). These consequences create complex dynamics and often unexpected outcomes, which may have long-term effects on socialecological systems (Liu et al. 2007). We are now beginning to see some of the emerging trends, dynamics, feedbacks, and surprises that are impor- tant for human well-being, but we are a long way from understanding or being able to manage them. A combina- tion of theory development and multiple research approaches (place-based, cross-scale, long-term, and com- parative) that harmonize diverse disciplinary perspectives is needed to develop understanding and build the capacity to sustainably manage socialecological systems. Here, we propose a new mechanistic framework to guide this research, which integrates the internal and interactive dynamics of social and natural systems. nPressPulse Dynamics and ecosystem services: an integrated, long-term, socialecological research framework As noted above, scientists have called repeatedly for greater integration between the social and biophysical domains (eg Robertson et al. 2004; Palmer et al. 2005; Pickett et al. 2005; Farber et al. 2006; Haberl et al. 2006; Liu et al. 2007). Typically, these calls are accompanied by illus- trative case studies and provide general rationales for why such research is needed, yet rarely do they propose useful roadmaps for implementing truly integrated, hypothesis- driven research in socialecological systems. There is therefore a compelling need for a comprehensive concep- tual framework that is based on highly relevant discipli- nary research, but at the same time facilitates linkages among disciplines over the time frames and spatial scales at which socialecological systems operate and interact. Understanding change is a fundamental challenge for environmental science. Socialecological systems can transform incrementally and at times predictably. Some of the most important routine changes (eg post-fire succes- sion or housing prices) are reasonably well understood and are incorporated into management practices, yet these changes are best understood primarily within the biophys- ical or social-system contexts. Other changes are large in magnitude, are spatially extensive, and alter socialeco- logical systems for long time periods; examples include the loss of keystone species, land-use change drivers (such as zoning practices and homestead policy), or the increased demand for biofuels. Although large changes may account for most of the cumulative dynamics observed, they are infrequent or pulsed in nature. As a consequence, observations of these pulsed events are few, individual cases may be unique, and our ability to general- ize or predict their impacts on socialecological systems remains severely limited. Understanding the drivers and interactions between sudden events (pulse dynamics) and extensive, pervasive, and subtle change (press dynamics) is therefore one of the most important chal- lenges for socialecological science. We propose that presspulse dynamics and ecosystem services can form the critical linkage between social and biophysical domains and serve as the foundation for long- term, integrated, socialecological research across scales. Figure 1 presents the basic components of a framework, known as the PressPulse Dynamics (PPD) framework, to accomplish this goal. The PPD framework contains four core components: (1) press and pulse events, (2) a biophysical template, (3) ecosystem services, and (4) a social template. The biophysical and social domains (areas of study) represent traditional disciplinary research paradigms that define processes within each domain. The biophysical template (eg geology, hydrology) constrains fundamental and well-documented relationships between biotic structure and ecosystem functioning, whereas the social template (eg legal regulation, social networks) encloses a range of possible human outcomes and behav- iors, and the dynamics between them. In the PPD framework, unlike in other models, the dynamics of biophysical systems are driven by press and pulse events (Smith et al. 2009). Pulse events, such as floods (both natural and human regulated), are relatively discrete and rapidly alter species abundances and ecosys- tem functioning. Most ecosystems have a characteristic natural disturbance regime that includes the size, fre- quency, and intensity of pulse disturbances. The natural disturbance regime in most ecosystems has been altered by human activities, including those related to species extinc- tions, as well as land-use change and management deci- SL Collins et al. A framework for socialecological research The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org sions (eg flood control). In contrast, press events, such as sea-level rise, eutrophication, or mean temperature increases, are sustained and chronic. Ecosystems are now subjected to a variety of environmental presses (eg increasing atmospheric carbon diox- ide concentrations, nitrogen deposi- tion, global warming). Over time, presses, pulses, and pulsepress inter- actions alter species abundances and the relationships between biotic structure and ecosystem functioning (Smith et al. 2009), which ultimately change the quantity and quality of essential services that humans gain from ecosystems. Most research in the social sciences has historically focused on social, eco- nomic, and political systems in isola- tion from their biophysical surround- ings, or has considered the en- vironment as merely a backdrop for the functioning of social systems. The PPD framework overcomes this isolation by explicitly articulating the reciprocal relationship between the biophysical and social templates through press pulse events and changes in the quan- tity or quality of selected ecosystem ser- vices. Though much attention has been given to the pattern, if not the process, of interaction between the social and the biophysical systems that represent the extreme example of a human-dom- inated world ie urban and wildland areas the PPD framework provides the means for a more nuanced understanding of socialecological systems across a continuum of developed to undeveloped lands. This has important implications for socialecological science, given that the environmental changes of greatest consequence that are expected in the coming decades will derive from human migration and population growth on rural and quasi-rural lands (Brown et al. 2005). The connectivity between places and people across this continuum demands that scientists and managers, for example, understand water as a natural hydrologic system that supports human life or fails to do so, depending on how the system is altered and managed. Only with such an integrative under- standing will it be possible to address (and even resolve) the tradeoffs and social equities of differing needs, responsi- bilities, and activities required to sustain humans in their broader environment. Together, the biophysical and social templates accom- modate core disciplinary research activities that feed information into a larger research framework. In essence, the model assumes a continuous cycle of human decision making, which affects the biophysical template via changes in (1) the intensity of press events and (2) the fre- quency, intensity, and scale of pulse events. Collectively, altered press and pulse events have quantifiable implica- tions for and impacts on ecosystem services, and changes in these services feed back to alter human behaviors and outcomes (Figure 1). Because they represent both quantifiable and qualitative benefits that humans derive from ecosystems, ecosystem services form the bridge between the biophysical and social templates. Ecosystem services can be classified as provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting (MA 2005). Provisioning ecosystem services that have markets (eg food, fiber, biofuel) have been studied extensively from the standpoint of enhancing supplies. The same is true of certain cultural ecosystem services, notably recre- ational ones. But the regulating ecosystem services that maintain essential balance in terrestrial ecosystems as well as the supporting ecosystem services that enable ecosystems to supply other types of services that humans experience directly are much less obvious to people, Figure 1. The PPD framework provides the basis for long-term, integrated, socialecological research. The right-hand side represents the domain of traditional ecological research; the left-hand side represents human dimensions of environmental change; the two are linked by ecosystem services and by pulse and press events influenced or caused by human behavior (bottom and top, respectively). H1H6 refer to integrating hypotheses that focus the long-term research agenda. Framework hypotheses: H1 long-term press disturbances and short-term pulse disturbances interact to alter ecosystem structure and function; H2 biotic structure is both a cause and a consequence of ecological fluxes of energy and matter; H3 altered ecosystem dynamics negatively affect most ecosystem services; H4 changes in vital ecosystem services alter human outcomes; H5 changes in human outcomes, such as quality of life or perceptions, affect human behavior; H6 predictable and unpredictable human behavioral responses influence the frequency, magnitude, or form of press and pulse disturbance regimes across ecosystems. External drivers Climate, globalization Pulses: fire, drought, storms, dust events, pulse nutrient inputs, fertilization Presses: climate change, nutrient loading, sea-level rise, increased human resource consumption Social template Human behavior Policy, markets, reproduction and migration Human outcomes Quality of life, human health, perception and value H5 H6 H1 Biophysical template Community structure Species turnover time, trophic structure, microbial diversity Ecosystem function Flux, transport, storage, transformation, stoichiometry, primary productivity H2 Ecosystem services Regulating: nutrient filtration, nutrient retention, C sequestration, disease regulation, pest suppression Provisioning: food, fiber, and fuel Cultural: aesthetics and recreation Supporting: primary production, nutrient cycling H4 H3 A framework for socialecological research SL Collins et al. www.frontiersinecology.org The Ecological Society of America and are therefore often ignored in decision-making processes (Daily et al. 2009). Human behavioral decisions from the individual to the institutional levels affect ecosystem processes that in turn determine the quality and quantity of ecosystem services that influence human well-being. The concept of ecosystem services therefore constitutes the crucial link between natural capital and social capital in the PPD framework. The PPD framework is hypothesis driven, iterative, and scalable, as illustrated by an example from metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. Over the past century, irrigated fields in central Arizona have increasingly been lost to housing development (Redman and Foster 2008). Land conver- sion a press was a direct result of increased post-World War II migration to the region, coincident with the invention of air conditioning and the rise of the automo- bile. Flash flooding, a pulse disturbance common in the arid southwestern US, was incompatible with maintaining residences that encroached on unregulated, ephemeral streams such as Indian Bend Wash, which runs through Scottsdale, a suburb to the northeast of Phoenix. In the late 1960s, loss of the floodplain buffer led to substantial property damage associated with a particularly severe flood (Roach et al. 2008). Both municipal and federal authorities proposed modifications to handle subsequent flooding, and these transformed the wash into a greenbelt a chain of small lakes connected by stream channels and surrounded by parks and golf courses. The new ecosystem provides flood modulation (Figure 2), recreational ameni- ties, and aesthetic values, and is supported by an altered biogeochemistry as compared with that of the pre-modifi- cation phase (Grimm et al. 2005). Low-flow periods must be maintained by means of imported water, a management decision that has further consequences for nutrient con- centrations (Roach and Grimm 2009) and can lead to algal blooms in the lakes, which are in turn treated with algicides by park managers. The PPD framework incorporates and allows for relevant disciplinary research on hypothe- ses (Figure 1), such as biotic structure is both a cause and a consequence of ecological fluxes of energy and matter. However, the more impor- tant features of the PPD framework are the cru- cial integrative hypotheses, such as changes in ecosystem services feed back to alter human outcomes. Such hypotheses are designed to integrate social and ecological drivers and feedbacks. For example, hurricanes, as pulse events, periodically reshape the social and eco- logical landscape of southern Florida. In 1992, the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew spurred suburbanization considerably, which in turn altered the availability of key ecosystem ser- vices associated with agricultural and undevel- oped lands (Ogden et al. unpublished data). Another example illustrates the role of altered presspulse drivers; in the Yahara Lakes region of southern Wisconsin, non-point-source pollution his- torically has been a consistent press, as phosphorus-satu- rated soils slowly eroded and drove lake eutrophication. However, the economic shift toward confined animal feeding operations has led to large pulse manure runoff events, and such events are likely to increase as climate change leads to more frequent severe storm events. The shift from press- to pulse-driven dynamics will lead to new conflicts and new policy issues for managing water quality, as well as floodwaters, in this region (Carpenter et al. 2006). These interdisciplinary linkages arise from understanding the ecological importance of ecosystem services, as well as how humans value and experience those services, which in turn conditions their actions and responses to the environment. In sum, the PPD frame- work guides the development of falsifiable hypotheses, not only on how subsets of socialecological systems interact over time, but also on how integrated socialecological systems respond, change, and adapt. To be useful, a unifying framework must also be scalable, to address hypotheses across relevant spatial and temporal domains. Indeed, the PPD framework itself could be viewed as a general testable hypothesis about how socialecological systems behave within and across scales, and all of the hypotheses presented in Figure 1 can also be addressed locally, regionally, and globally. As an example, we illustrate the regional application of this framework for the study of socialecological systems in the Negev Desert in Israel (Panel 1). nRelationship to other frameworks Several conceptual frameworks for socialecological integration have emerged as this interdisciplinary R
H a l e Figure 2. Indian Bend Wash, Scottsdale, Arizona, during a flood that covered a large portion of the greenway, which spread out over parks, golf courses, and streets, but resulted in minimal damage. This design was one of the first non-structural flood management systems in the US, created by local and federal government officials after damaging floods occurred in the 1960s. SL Collins et al. A framework for socialecological research The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org Panel 1. Land-use change in Israels Negev Desert In Israel, scientists associated with the local Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network are using the PPD model to study the linkages and feedbacks between large-scale land-use changes (residential development, forestry, anti-desertifica- tion management) and ecological impacts in the northern Negev Desert (Figure 3). While the Israeli LTER network has a long history of ecology and management research in the Negev (Shachak et al. 1998; Hoekstra and Shachak 1999), the social component is relatively new. Thus, the PPD model has been used to (1) organize previous and cur- rent research into a comprehensive and interdisci- plinary framework, (2) encourage an interdiscipli- nary approach to hypothesis formulation and driven research, and (3) conceptualize the feed- backs between human behaviordecision making and ecosystem change at multiple scales. The ulti- mate goal is to identify gaps in understanding and research needs. The northern Negev Desert is a large and rela- tively sparsely populated region of an otherwise very densely populated country. As such, in national-scale land-use planning, it has a central role in future devel- opment, even though its status as a semiarid demo- graphic periphery has made it a relatively unpopular destination for potential residents (Teschner et al. 2010). Land-use managers have responded by increasing the regions attractiveness to current and potential residents through investment in economic opportunities (agriculture, industry, tourism) and development of recreational areas (forests, parks, and reservoirs). Because the region is a transition zone between the arid desert in the south and the Mediterranean climate zone in the north, forestry is also promoted as an anti-desertification strategy (Orlovsky 2008). An additional factor in land-use decision making is the status of the indigenous Bedouin population and its contentious relationship with the state on issues of settlement and grazing/cultivation rights (Yahel 2006; Abu-Saad 2008). The fundamental relationships we are conceptualizing and analyzing via the PPD model are large-scale (kilometers) and small-scale (meters) land-use changes, their impact on ecosystem structure and function, the resultant changes in ecosystem service provision, and the responses by the public and policy makers (and so on in this cyclic relationship). The predominant changes are afforestation with high- and low-density plantings, increased land cultivation, and expanding residential settlement. Unplanned cultivation and residential development also have important ecological and social implications. The most impor- tant pulses in this semiarid ecosystem are floods and droughts, soil erosion (accompanying floods), dust deposition, and human landscape modifications. The presses are primarily increased human activities, such as recreational use, landscape conversion by settlements, agriculture, forestry, and grazing (Figure 4). The landscape is viewed at various scales as a mosaic of patches with distinctive structures that control the flow of materials and energy across the landscape (Shachak et al. 1998), and changes in disturbance regimes alter the mosaic and thus the distribution of materials, energy, and ecosystem services (Figure 3). Importantly, most of the shifts of ecosystem services in the northern Negev are considered by decision makers as desirable in terms of human quality of life. Afforestation efforts lead to increased water infiltration and carbon sequestration (Grunzweig et al. 2003; Rotenberg and Yakir 2010), decreased erosion and airborne dust concentrations, as well as the creation of a network of recreational areas popular with local residents (Ginsberg 2000). On the other hand, the impact on biodiversity is mixed; plant diversity may increase (Boeken and Shachak 1994), for example, but abundance of local specialist species may decrease (Shochat et al. 2001; Hawlena et al. 2010). The aesthetic impact is widely debated, as are the politicaldemographic implications vis--vis the Negev Bedouin. Policies to increase residential opportunities are politically popular, though residential development, depending on the type, leads to potentially detri- mental impacts on ecosystem function and on biodiversity (Orenstein et al. 2009). The PPD framework is assisting researchers and policy makers to conceptualize these multiple, concurrent, and often conflicting impacts and generate hypotheses regarding how changes in land-use policies will affect different ecosystem service flows. One such study is looking at the ecological implications at the local and regional scale of low-density residential settlement in the Negev. This study considers the politicaldemographic drivers of such human settlement pat- terns (Orenstein and Hamburg 2009), the ecological implications, and the popular response to perceived changes in the provision of ecosystem services (Orenstein et al. 2009). Such relationships are investigated at the regional scale (eg northern Negev) with regard to impact on desert aesthetics and landscape fragmentation, and at the local scale (eg the wadi, an Arabic term for a dry riverbed or intermittent stream) on water flow, and rodent, insect, and shrub diversity. External drivers Economic trends, security and foreign relations, demographics, political climate, economic trends Pulses: dust events, floods, drought, nutrient input Presses: increased recreational use, landscape conversion (settlement), agriculture, forestry, and grazing Social template Human behavior Demographic changes, legal and illegal settlement, anti-desertification measures, tourism, forestry, agriculture, grazing Human outcomes Land-use policy (national and regional), settlement type and distribution, enforcement mechanisms, demographic distribution, quality of life H5 H6 H1 Biophysical template Community structure Small-scale patchiness (shrubs, crusts), large-scale patchiness, ecological gradient (ecotone) Ecosystem function Hydrological cycles (wadis, groundwater), nutrient cycles, soil fluxes, biomass productivity H2 Ecosystem services Regulating: C sequestration, disease regulation, pest suppression Provisioning: food and fiber Cultural: biodiversity, rare species, open space, recreation, aesthetics Supporting: primary production, nutrient cycling H4 H3 Figure 3. Example of the PPD framework for socialecological research in the Negev Desert. Hypotheses are shown in the text box below the figure. H1 changes in landscape characteristics influence ecosystem processes (eg water, soil) and landscape structure (eg patchiness); H2 human residential patches (eg farms and neighborhoods) affect aboveground water flows at the landscape scale; H3 changes in resource flows influence species diversity; H4 changes in species diversity affect land-use decision- making; H5 ecosystem services play a role in determining open space preservation policy and biodiversity preservation policy in Israel; H6 different residential community types (eg city, town, farm) create unique disturbance regimes on the landscape. Figure 4. An olive grove surrounded by pine plantations north of Beer Sheva, Israel. Land-use changes in the northern Negev Desert have augmented some ecosystem services, like carbon sequestration, food production, water infiltration, and recreational opportunities, but impacts on other services, such as aesthetics and habitat for biodiversity, are more equivocal. D E
O r e n s t e i n A framework for socialecological research SL Collins et al. research paradigm has evolved, yet the purpose and gen- eral utility of these frameworks vary widely, suggesting that they serve multiple goals. Several conceptual frame- works provide evidence for why such research is needed on topics such as environmental degradation, conserva- tion planning, and sustainability (eg Kremen and Ostfeld 2005; Haberl et al. 2006), but they offer limited informa- tion on how to conduct an integrated research agenda. Indeed, some of these models are highly linear and pro- vide no clear mechanism for understanding key feedbacks between social and biophysical systems (Kremen and Ostfeld 2005; Theobold et al. 2005). Other frameworks describe the necessary components of interactive socialecological systems (Grimm et al. 2000), or focus on only a subset of potential interactions, such as economics and biodiversity (Fisher et al. 2009; Ohl et al. 2007). Often such models lack temporal dynamics or specifics on how other components of socialecological systems should or could be integrated. A popular research framework in European socialeco- logical research is the Driving forcePressureState ImpactResponse model (eg Ohl et al. 2007). This general model has similarities to the PPD framework, including key feedbacks, but it lacks an explicit focus on ecosystem ser- vices. The same is true of Redman et al.s (2004) socialeco- logical model, which highlights the areas where social and ecological systems intersect without ecosystem services and presspulse constructs (Ohl and Swinton 2010). By con- trast, quantifiable ecosystem services explicitly link social and biophysical systems in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) as well as in Daily et al. (2009). But one key difference is that, like Redman et al. (2004), the PPD framework emphasizes that human behavior is partly influenced by factors external to ecological feedbacks. Another major difference is the generalizable set of hypotheses within the PPD framework that provide guid- ance for an integrated, long-term research agenda, as well as the emphasis on presspulse drivers. Thus, unlike other conceptualizations, the PPD framework is designed to be generalizable, scalar, mechanistic, and hypothesis driven. nConclusions Testing the hypotheses embedded in the PPD framework, along with future refinement of the framework itself, will rely on theoretical, empirical, and methodological contri- butions from a broad suite of biophysical and social sci- ences. Application of the framework will contribute sub- stantially to the development and testing of theory within these disciplines and, more importantly, will help to build transdisciplinary knowledge of socialecological systems. Indeed, many of the empirical and methodologi- cal building blocks needed to advance such transdiscipli- nary knowledge are rapidly emerging. Social scientists are relying on progressively more biological constructs to explain social variation and change (Briggs et al. 2006; Gragson and Grove 2006). Likewise, natural scientists are using social constructs to understand biophysical variations over the long term (Walker et al. 2009). Social data are increasingly spatially explicit (Irwin and Geoghegan 2001), which permits novel hypothesis testing and analysis that is spatially relevant, as well as multi-scaled. Moreover, ecological research is now commonly conducted at socially relevant scales. Eventually, the use of spatial data may lead to unifying theories that view phenomena as integrated socialecological systems and, with the inclusion of long- term data and analyses, this will move theory from the realm of correlations and associations to a deeper probing of both mechanism and pattern. Biophysical and social scientists examine how systems are organized and the roles played by internal versus external influences (Pickett et al. 2005). Moving environmental sci- ence to a new level of research collaboration, synthesis, and integration requires a shift from viewing humans as external drivers of natural systems to viewing them as affected agents acting within socialecological systems (Grimm et al. 2000) agents that depend on ecosystem services across a range of scales and feedback cycles. As the human population con- tinues to grow, with attendant land-use, technological, and economic changes, it will place additional demands on vital ecosystem services (MA 2005). These demands will require integrated, long-term research that spans multiple disci- plines and that will ultimately provide solutions for the environment and society. 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The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org SL Collins et al. Supplemental information WebPanel 1. Author affiliations Scott L Collins 1* , Stephen R Carpenter 2 , Scott M Swinton 3 , Daniel E Orenstein 4 , Daniel L Childers 5 , Ted L Gragson 6 , Nancy B Grimm 7 , J Morgan Grove 8 , Sharon L Harlan 9 , Jason P Kaye 10 , Alan K Knapp 11 , Gary P Kofinas 12 , John J Magnuson 2 , William H McDowell 13 , John M Melack 14 , Laura A Ogden 15 , G Philip Robertson 16 , Melinda D Smith 17 , and Ali C Whitmer 18 1 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM *(scollins@sevilleta.unm.edu); 2 Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; 3 Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; 4 Center for Urban and Regional Studies, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel; 5 School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; 6 Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA; 7 School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; 8 US Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Baltimore, MD; 9 School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; 10 Department of Crop and Soil Science, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; 11 Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Ft Collins, CO; 12 Department of Resources Management, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK; 13 Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH; 14 Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA; 15 Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL; 16 Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI; 17 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT; 18 Georgetown University, Washington, DC