The crucial role of biodiversity in the links between ecosystems and societies has been repeatedly highlighted both as source of wellbeing and as a target of human actions, but not all aspects of biodiversity are equally important to different ecosystem services. Similarly, different social actors have different perceptions of and access to ecosystem services, and therefore, they have different wants and capacities to select directly or indirectly for particular biodiversity and ecosystem characteristics. Their choices feed back onto the ecosystem services provided to all parties involved and in turn, affect future decisions. Despite this recognition, the research communities addressing biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human outcomes have yet to develop frameworks that adequately treat the multiple dimensions and interactions in the relationship. Here, we present an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of relationships between functional diversity, ecosystem services, and human actions that is applicable to specific social environmental systems at local scales. We connect the mechanistic understanding of the ecological role of diversity with its social relevance: ecosystem services. The framework permits connections between functional diversity components and priorities of social actors using land use decisions and ecosystem services as the main links between these ecological and social components. We propose a matrix-based method that provides a transparent and flexible platform for quantifying and integrating social and ecological information and negotiating potentially conflicting land uses among multiple social actors. We illustrate the applicability of our framework by way of land use examples from temperate to subtropical South America, an area of rapid social and ecological change.

This study examined the nature and prevalence of bullying/victimization by peers and teachers reported by 1,284 students (mean age = 15.2 years) drawn from a representative sample of 25 South Australian government and private schools. Students completed a self-report survey containing questions relating to teacher and peer-related bullying, measures of psychosocial adjustment, and personality. The results showed that students could be clearly differentiated according to the type of victimization they had experienced. Students reporting peer victimization typically showed high levels of social alienation, poorer psychological functioning, and poorer self-esteem and self-image. By contrast, victims of teacher victimization were more likely to be rated as less able academically, had less intention to complete school and were more likely to be engaged in high-risk behaviours such as gambling, drug use and under-age drinking. Most bullying was found to occur at school rather than outside school and involved verbal aggression rather than physical harm. Boys were significantly more likely to be bullied than girls, with the highest rates being observed amongst boys attending single-sex government schools. Girls were more likely to be subject to bullying if they attended coeducational private schools. The implications of this work for enhancing school-retention rates and addressing psychological distress amongst adolescent students are discussed.

We examined the validity of the reported link between well‐being and leisure participation in adolescents. Nine hundred and forty‐seven, Year 10 students from 19 schools in Adelaide, South Australia, were recruited. Participants completed a questionnaire concerning participation in social, non‐social and unstructured leisure activities as well as measures of personality. As expected, personality variables were better predictors of adolescent well‐being than spare‐time use, although engagement in less structured leisure activities was associated with poorer psychological well‐being and substance use. These findings support previous personality research which suggests that spare‐time use may be related to well‐being only insofar as individuals who are psychologically healthy tend to be involved in structured leisure activities. The implications of these findings for school policy and future research concerning the links between leisure involvement and psychological well‐being are discussed.

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Articles Earth is undergoing profound changes in climate, ecology, culture, and technology (MEA 2005). Moreover, changes that occur in one place often have far-flung consequences because of biophysical connections (by oceans, atmosphere, and migratory animals) and human linkages (through high-speed communication, global markets, and human travel). These global changes challenge our capacity to sustain the desirable features of the local systems in which we live for at least three reasons : (1) It is impossible to preserve a system in its current state when the factors that control its basic structure and function are changing directionally (i.e., show a persistent trend over time). (2) Many processes that concern policymakers at local or regional scales respond to changes occurring at other scales, over which they have little influence. (3) Diverse actors want to sustain different, sometimes conflicting, local and regional features in the face of directional change. For these reasons, global change has created "wicked problems" for society that are difficult or impossible to solve within current management and policy paradigms. If wicked problems cannot be solved without a shift in paradigm, incremental approaches to improving conditions may be insufficient to address major societal issues. What is a wicked problem, and why is it difficult to solve?The concept of wicked problems was developed by community planners to describe social problems (e.g., poverty) that are so complex that people disagree about how to define and solve them; in addition, efforts to solve the focal problem