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Navigating the Perfect Storm: Research Strategies for Socialecological Systems in a Rapidly Evolving World

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Abstract

The ‘Perfect Storm’ metaphor describes a combination of events that causes a surprising or dramatic impact. It lends an evolutionary perspective to how social-ecological interactions change. Thus, we argue that an improved understanding of how social-ecological systems have evolved up to the present is necessary for the modelling, understanding and anticipation of current and future social-ecological systems. Here we consider the implications of an evolutionary perspective for designing research approaches. One desirable approach is the creation of multi-decadal records produced by integrating palaeoenvironmental, instrument and documentary sources at multiple spatial scales. We also consider the potential for improved analytical and modelling approaches by developing system dynamical, cellular and agent-based models, observing complex behaviour in social-ecological systems against which to test systems dynamical theory, and drawing better lessons from history. Alongside these is the need to find more appropriate ways to communicate complex systems, risk and uncertainty to the public and to policy-makers.

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Acknowledgments

This paper represents the outcome of discussions held within the Sustainability Science research group at Southampton (previously Living with Environmental Change) during 2009. Figure 1 was produced following a workshop held at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), Santa Barbara, within the IHDP-IGBP initiative ‘Integrating the History and Future of People on Earth’ in November 2008. The IHOPE initiative (http://www.aimes.ucar.edu/ihope/) aims to better understand the social-ecological dynamics of human history by testing human-environment system models against historical changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    John A. Dearing & Mary E. Edwards

  2. Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Seth Bullock

  3. Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA

    Robert Costanza

  4. Department of Geography, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

    Terry P. Dawson

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southhampton, Southampton, UK

    Guy M. Poppy

  6. Department of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Graham M. Smith

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  1. John A. Dearing
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Correspondence to John A. Dearing.

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Dearing, J.A., Bullock, S., Costanza, R. et al. Navigating the Perfect Storm: Research Strategies for Socialecological Systems in a Rapidly Evolving World. Environmental Management 49, 767–775 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-012-9833-6

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