Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: modeling and policy implications

Levin, Simon A.; Xepapadeas, Tasos; Crépin, Anne‐Sophie; Norberg, Jon; Zeeuw, Aart de; Folke, Carl; Hughes, Terry P.; Arrow, Kenneth J.; Barrett, Scott; Daily, Gretchen C.; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Kautsky, Nils; Mäler, Karl‐Göran; Polasky, Steve; Troell, Max; Vincent, Jeffrey R.; Walker, Brian

doi:10.1017/s1355770x12000460

Cited by 604 publications

(510 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Coleman (Coleman 1988) and Granovetter (Granovetter 1985) argue that closure, a network tie between two individuals who share a common partner, is a key aspect of social capital, facilitating cooperation through trust and the ability to sanction non-cooperators. In contrast, Burt (Burt 2000) (Simon 1977;Anderies et al 2007;Levin et al 2013). The balance between open and closed network structures is also a feature of the canonical Bsmall-world^network model (Watts and Strogatz 1998).…”

Section: Network: the Multiple Faces Of Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation, cooperation, and the structure of three regional sustainable agriculture networks in California

Levy

Lubell

2017

Reg Environ Change

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Regional agroecological systems are examples of complex adaptive systems, where sustainability is promoted by social networks that facilitate information sharing, cooperation, and connectivity among specialized components of the system. Much of the existing literature on social capital fails to recognize how networks support multiple social processes. Our paper overcomes this problem by analyzing how the social networks of wine grape growers exhibit structural features related to multiple social processes: ties to central actors that build bridging social capital and facilitate the diffusion of innovations, ties that close triangles and build bonding social capital to solve cooperation dilemmas, and ties to individuals that span community boundaries to connect specialized components of the system. We use survey data to measure the communication networks of growers in three viticulture regions in California. A combination of descriptive statistics, conditional uniform random graph tests, and exponential random graph models provides empirical support for our hypotheses. The findings reflect regional differences in geography and institutional histories, which may influence the capacity to respond to regional environmental change.

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Section: Network: the Multiple Faces Of Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation, cooperation, and the structure of three regional sustainable agriculture networks in California

Levy

Lubell

2017

Reg Environ Change

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“…There is a need to also emphasize what ecosystem services such as flood regulation, provisioning services, and loss and impacts on other species besides humans, occur during disasters, and how this in turn impacts future disaster risk. Without understanding ecosystem function, it is impossible to gauge uncertainty, and thus to effectively model local or global climate change impacts or critical thresholds and tipping points (Levin, 1992;Levin et al, 2013). Integrating risk and resilience analyses is a complex task requiring collaboration among many partners .…”

Section: Conclusion and Gaps-contributions To The Ipcc Special Reportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While risk and resilience approaches differ, they are, and need to be, complementary (Park et al, 2013). Case studies integrating risk and resilience approaches in engineering systems (cf Park et al, 2013), utilizing complex adaptive systems theory (cf Levin et al, 2013) or risk management (cf Convertino et al, 2013;Convertino & Valverde, 1982), risk governance and policy perspectives (cf Levin et al, 2013;Linkov et al, 2013) are addressing many of these complexities, and this is an area that should receive further attention.…”

Section: Conclusion and Gaps-contributions To The Ipcc Special Reportmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Shape Climate Risk Policies After the Paris Agreement? The Importance of Perceptions as a Driver for Climate Risk Management

2017

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Risk perception research has played an influential role in supporting risk management and risk communication policy. Risk perception studies are popular across a range of disciplines in the social and natural sciences for a wide range of hazard types. Their results have helped to articulate the complex individual, relational, structural, and environmental factors influencing people's behavior. Connections between individual and collective behaviors and norms impacting global climate change, and consequently, local disaster risk, however, are infrequently included in disaster risk management. This paper presents results from two diverse and complementary European risk perception studies examining both natural and anthropogenic hazards. Research gaps and recommendations for developing more comprehensive risk management strategies are presented.

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“…The art of modeling thus relies on our ability to capture as much as possible of the system structure and observed dynamics while limiting dimensionality to a handful of dynamic variables (Link, 2010;Crépin et al, 2011;Levin et al, 2012). Not only do we need to choose our variables with great care, we also need to model their dynamics appropriately.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As pointed out by many, the complexity and nonlinearity inherent in ecosystembased sheries management makes it impossible to provide general analyses and results; each speci c case and scenarios require a speci c and empirically based analysis (Link, 2010;Crépin et al, 2011;Levin et al, 2012). Of general interest, then, is the methods and conceptual approaches that is found to yield valuable insights in special cases and accordingly has potential when applied to new scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Up the ante on bioeconomic submodels of marine food webs: A data assimilation-based approach

Ekerhovd¹,

Kvamsdal²

2017

Ecological Economics

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SNF SAMFUNNS-OG NAERINGSLIVSFORSKNING AS-er et selskap i NHH-miljøet med oppgave å initiere, organisere og utføre eksternfinansiert forskning. Norges Handelshøyskole og Stiftelsen SNF er aksjonaerer. Virksomheten drives med basis i egen stab og fagmiljøene ved NHH.SNF er ett av Norges ledende forsk ningsmiljø innen anvendt økonomisk-administrativ forskning, og har gode samarbeidsrelasjoner til andre forskningsmiljøer i Norge og utlandet. SNF utfører forskning og forsknings baserte utredninger for sentrale beslutningstakere i privat og offentlig sektor. Forskningen organiseres i programmer og prosjekter av langsiktig og mer kortsiktig karakter. Alle publikasjoner er offentlig tilgjengelig. SNF CENTRE FOR APPLIED RESEARCH AT NHH-is a company within the NHH group. Its objective is to initiate, organize and conduct externally financed research. The company shareholders are the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and the SNF Foundation. Research is carried out by SNF´s own staff as well as faculty members at NHH. SNF is one of Norway´s leading research environment within applied economic administrative research. It has excellent working relations with other research environments in Norway as well as abroad. SNF conducts research and prepares research-based reports for major decision-makers both in the private and the public sector. Research is organized in programmes and projects on a long-term as well as a short-term basis. All our publications are publicly available. While economists have discussed ecosystem-based management and similar concepts, little attention has been devoted to the art of modeling. Models of ecosystems or foodwebs that make economic analysis viable should capture as much as possible of system structure and dynamics while balancing biological and ecological detail against dimensionality and model complexity. Relevant models need a strong, empirical content, but data availability may inhibit modeling e orts. Models are bound to be nonlinear, and model and observational uncertainty should be observed. We suggest the data assimilation method ensemble Kalman ltering to improve modeling of ecosystems or foodwebs. To illustrate the method, we model the dynamics of the main, pelagic species in the Norwegian Sea. In order to reduce the parameter dimensionality, the species are modeled to rely on a common carrying capacity.We also take further methodological steps to deal with a still high number of parameters.Our best model captures much of the observed dynamics in the sh stocks, but the estimated model error is moderate.

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Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: modeling and policy implications

Cited by 604 publications

References 92 publications

Innovation, cooperation, and the structure of three regional sustainable agriculture networks in California

Innovation, cooperation, and the structure of three regional sustainable agriculture networks in California

How to Shape Climate Risk Policies After the Paris Agreement? The Importance of Perceptions as a Driver for Climate Risk Management

Up the ante on bioeconomic submodels of marine food webs: A data assimilation-based approach

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