Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Land system science and the social–environmental system: the case of Southern Yucata´ n Peninsular Region (SYPR) project 1 2 3 4 BL Turner II , J Geoghegan , D Lawrence , C Radel , 5 6 7 8 9 B Schmook , C Vance , S Manson , E Keys , D Foster , 10 5 11 11 P Klepeis , H Vester , J Rogan , R Roy Chowdhury , 12 13 14 L Schneider , R Dickson and Y Ogenva-Himmelberger Land system science axiomatically addresses social– Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 19 environmental systems by integrating the dynamics of land 2016, :18–29 uses (social) and land covers (environment), invariably including This review comes from a themed issue on Sustainability science the use of remote sensing data and often, spatially explicit Edited by Hal Mooney models of land change. This kind of research is illustrated through the Southern Yucata´ n Peninsular Region project Received 3 July 2015; Accepted 25 August 2015 (1997–2008) aimed at understanding, predicting, and projecting spatially explicit land change in a region with juxtaposed land uses-agriculture and a biosphere reserve. The successes of the project, its contributions to contemporary http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.08.014 land system science, and the organizational mechanisms that 1877-3435/Published by Elsevier Ltd. fostered the research are identified as well as various corrections, which if applied, may have refined and extended the project’s goals. Overall, the project demonstrates the kind of integrated research required to advance understanding of a social-environment system and the team-based methods used in the process. Integrated research linked to sustainability Addresses 1 Sustainability science addresses human–environment School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA relationships as signified by the base phenomenon of 2 Department of Economics, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, study, the social–environmental system (SES) [1]. Ana- USA 3 lytically, this phenomenon is typically treated as two Department of Environmental Science, University of Virginia, subsystems requiring specialists from the social and Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA 4 Department of Environment & Society, Utah State University, Logan, natural sciences to team together to understand the UT 84322, USA interactions between the subsystems and their conse- 5 Departamento de Conservacio´ n de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la quences for the SES as a whole. This approach is neces- Frontera Sur—Unidad Chetumal, Chetumal, QR MX 770414, Mexico 6 sitated because (1) the complexity of SESs requires a Rheinisch-Westfa¨ lisches Institut fu¨ r Wirtschaftsforschung, Essen, GR range of knowledge that few, if any, researcher can 45182 & School of Humanities and Social Science, Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen GR 28759, Germany master alone, and (2) reflexive agents (humans) make 7 Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of the social subsystem analytically distinct from ambient Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA 8 environmental processes. As a result, funding and re- AAAS Science & Technology Fellow, National Science Foundation, search programs increasingly champion integrated, team- Arlington VA, 22230, USA 9 Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA 01366, USA based approaches to SES problem solving (e.g., the 10 Department of Geography, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY 13346, Coupled Natural-Human System program of the Nation- USA al Science Foundation [U.S.] or the emerging interna- 11 Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA tional program of Future Earth). 01601, USA 12 Department of Geography, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA With roots extending back to Alexander von Humboldt 13 Terra Carbon Project and Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, NC and the subsequent German Landschaft (landscape) tra- 27106, USA 14 dition [2], if not earlier, various research approaches have Department of International Development, Community, and treated land (or landscape) systems as SESs [3–7]. Global Environment, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01601, USA environmental change and sustainability research frame Corresponding author: Turner, BL ([email protected]) SESs explicitly through the lens of science, with attention to understanding the processes at play within SESs, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2016, 19:18–29 www.sciencedirect.com Land system science in Southern Yucata´ n Turner II et al. 19 modeling their interactions, and projecting the implica- and plays to the interests of the social sciences in theory of tions of their change. This framing dominated the SESs middle range [13], usually concerning some component of research advanced by the International Geosphere-Bio- the SES, as opposed to, for example, systems theory’s sphere Program (IGBP), especially its ecology compo- search for patterns and principles about the system itself nents, and in partnership with the International Human as exemplified in resilience research [14]. This same com- Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Program plexity promotes place-based studies, consistent with that (IHDP) sponsored the development of an international proposed for sustainability science [15]. Once important effort on Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) in 1991, linkages in the SES are revealed, hypotheses may be formally launching a research project by that name in tested, frequently through natural experiments in which 1994. Focused on land systems, it was reorganized as the variance in the system is not controlled. It is noteworthy Global Land Project (IGBP-IHDP) in 2005 and remains that no formal criteria have been established to determine on-going. Paralleling this effort, DIVERSITAS, estab- the boundaries of a place (area or region), but land system lished in 1991, increasingly adopted an SES framing for science tends to link some dimension of land cover (e.g., much of its biodiversity research, especially that on tropical forest or savanna) and use (e.g., slash-and-burn ecoSERVICES established in 2014 and intended to fuse cultivation or livestock herding), often within one gover- into Future Earth. nance jurisdiction (i.e., rarely crossing major governance boundaries). These origins strongly shaped the research efforts of, and SES approaches applied within, land system science [8] Various reviews of the contributions of land system sci- and complementary research on the resilience of SESs ence exist [7,9,10,11] and need not be reiterated here. [9]. Global change research communities required atten- Rather, we draw on one of the original projects linked to tion to the observation and projection of the kind, LUCC and GLP to illustrate integrated, team-based SES amount, and location of land changes. Land system research of this kind, the various challenges confronted science was challenged to improve observations through and the understanding gained in this effort, and on advances in the remote sensing data of land cover and reflection, changes in the design and operation of the model-based assessments of land-cover change, especial- project that may have improved its performance and ly in regard to spatio-temporal resolution. Remote sensing science contributions. science and modeling joined the natural and social sciences as the four legs of SES research on land systems Southern Yucata´ n Peninsular Region project: [10–12]. Integrated research teams emerged composed of an integrated effort to address a SES environmental, social, and remote sensing, and in many The Southern Yucata´n Peninsular Region project (SYPR), cases, modeling specialists, especially in regard to the operating from 1997 to 2008, sought to observe, understand, integration of social and environmental subsystems. and model changes in land-use and land-cover in the forests of southern Quintana Roo and Campeche, Mexico Unlike its complementary environmental research pro- (Figure 1). The study region was selected for several grams, land system science found it difficult to establish strategic reasons. First, it contains biodiverse, seasonal research objectives based on standard sets of theories and tropical to evergreen forests that were affected by ancient hypotheses about the operation of SESs. This lacuna Maya land uses but remained minimally disturbed for followed from the distinctions in the operations of the nearly a millennium after Maya abandonment about two subsystems, from the different perspectives in the C.E. 950 [16]. Second, agricultural settlements (ejidos) social sciences regarding the value of addressing proximate and cattle operations proliferated with the late 1960s con- (e.g., population pressures) or distal (e.g., political econo- struction of a highway crossing the peninsula, generating a my) drivers of land change [3,11], and from the complexity regional ‘hotspot’ of tropical deforestation, a large portion of of land systems. Rather, its international goals have been which was designated as the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve defined in terms of measuring, modeling, and understand- in 1989, part of the MesoAmerican Biological Corridor [17]. ing land-based SESs (aka coupled human–environment Third, a small, precursor project helped to identify the base systems), commonly involving exploratory research of the research problem and establish initial links to El Colegio de environmental and socio-political-economic factors at play, la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR)-Unidad Chetumal, a
Details
-
File Typepdf
-
Upload Time-
-
Content LanguagesEnglish
-
Upload UserAnonymous/Not logged-in
-
File Pages12 Page
-
File Size-