2. Ecosystem Service-Based Approaches for Status Assessment of Anthropocene Riverscapes

Abstract

Humanity is facing a crisis of its own making. The climate is changing. Oceans are warming. Dead zones of hundreds and thousands of square miles hover off our coasts. A mass extinction is in progress-the likes of which have not been seen for 65 million years. Salinization, pollution, and overconsumption threaten our supplies of freshwater. Our environments can no longer absorb human pressures. This is the condition of the Anthropocene-an age in which humans are altering the planet to such an extent that we are leaving a permanent and irreversible mark on its biological, hydrological, atmospheric, and geological systems. Humanity has initiated an environmental "phase shift, " and formerly resilient systems have been pushed into altered states. Even if humanity were to significantly modify its behaviors, the result would be a new equilibrium, fundamentally different from that of the preindustrial world.Identifying and working within environmental boundaries could mitigate the most extreme environmental consequences of human activity, and this is the approach favored by an increasing number of earth systems researchers. However, this will require dramatic shifts in consumption patterns, scientific assumptions, sociopolitical structures, and cultural systems. It will necessitate not only macro-level changes requiring unprecedented transnational cooperation but also micro-level adjustments in the practices of our everyday lives. To state it simply, putting the brakes on runaway environmental devastation will require a wholesale reworking of our societies, both from a technological-scientific standpoint and from a sociocultural standpoint. Research, planning, and implementation will require close collaboration between experts on the earth's biophysical systems and human sociocultural systems-between scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, policy experts, and community-based organizations.xvi Preface Unfortunately, however, in this era in which humans and human systems have become prime agents of changes to the planet, we have yet to create a research and policy culture that bridges the divides between these groups. Because of this, we lose an important tool for tackling some of humanity's biggest issues, detracting from our overall understanding of global ecological change and limiting our ability to respond to escalating crises.One of the most potentially productive approaches to bridging these divides is transdisciplinarity, an approach that addresses a problem by building research frameworks and methods that transcend disciplinary barriers (Jahn, Bergmann,