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1. Iowa Urban FEWS: Integrating Social and Biophysical Models for Exploration of Urban Food, Energy, and Water Systems

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2021.662186  

   Thompson, Jan ; Ganapathysubramanian, Baskar ; Chen, Wei ; Dorneich, Michael ; Gassman, Philip ; Krejci, Caroline ; Liebman, Matthew ; Nair, Ajay ; Passe, Ulrike ; Schwab, Nicholas ; et al ( May 2021 , Frontiers in Big Data)

   null (Ed.)

   Most people in the world live in urban areas, and their high population densities, heavy reliance on external sources of food, energy, and water, and disproportionately large waste production result in severe and cumulative negative environmental effects. Integrated study of urban areas requires a system-of-systems analytical framework that includes modeling with social and biophysical data. We describe preliminary work toward an integrated urban food-energy-water systems (FEWS) analysis using co-simulation for assessment of current and future conditions, with an emphasis on local (urban and urban-adjacent) food production. We create a framework to enable simultaneous analyses of climate dynamics, changes in land cover, built forms, energy use, and environmental outcomes associated with a set of drivers of system change related to policy, crop management, technology, social interaction, and market forces affecting food production. The ultimate goal of our research program is to enhance understanding of the urban FEWS nexus so as to improve system function and management, increase resilience, and enhance sustainability. Our approach involves data-driven co-simulation to enable coupling of disparate food, energy and water simulation models across a range of spatial and temporal scales. When complete, these models will quantify energy use and water quality outcomes for current systems, and determine if undesirable environmental effects are decreased and local food supply is increased with different configurations of socioeconomic and biophysical factors in urban and urban-adjacent areas. The effort emphasizes use of open-source simulation models and expert knowledge to guide modeling for individual and combined systems in the urban FEWS nexus. 

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2. Governing the gaps in water governance and land-use planning in a megacity: The example of hydrological risk in Mexico City

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.06.009  

   Lerner, Amy M. ; Eakin, Hallie C. ; Tellman, Elizabeth ; Bausch, Julia Chrissie ; Hernández Aguilar, Bertha ( January 2018 , Cities)

   Megacities are socio-ecological systems (SES) that encompass complex interactions between residents, institutions, and natural resource management. These interactions are exacerbated by climate change as resources such as water become scarce or hazardous through drought and flooding. In order to develop pathways for improved sustainability, the disparate factors that create vulnerable conditions and outcomes must be visible to decision-makers. Nevertheless, for such decision-makers to manage vulnerability effectively, they need to define the salient boundaries of the urban SES, and the relevant biophysical, technological, and socio-institutional attributes that play critical roles in vulnerability dynamics. Here we explore the problem of hydrological risk in Mexico City, where vulnerabilities to flooding and water scarcity are interconnected temporally and spatially, yet the formal and informal institutions and actors involved in the production and management of vulnerability are divided into two discrete problem domains: land-use planning and water resource management. We analyze interviews with city officials working in both domains to understand their different perspectives on the dynamics of socio-hydrological risk, including flooding and water scarcity. We find governance gaps within land-use planning and water management that lead to hydro-social risk, stemming from a failure to address informal institutions that exacerbate vulnerability to flooding and water scarcity. Mandates in both sectors are overlapping and confusing, while socio-hydrological risk is externalized to the informal domain, making it ungoverned. Integrated water management approaches that recognize and incorporate informality are needed to reduce vulnerability to water scarcity and flooding. 

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3. Informal roads as social-ecological-technological systems (SETS): sustainability challenges and impact on landscape transformations

   https://doi.org/10.31489/2021BMG4/144-154  

   Kuklina, Vera ; Petrov, Andrey ; Bilichenko, Irina ; Bogdanov, Viktor ; Kobylkin, Dmitriy ; Krasnoshtanova, Natalia ( October 2021 , Karaġandy universitetìnìn habaršysy Biologiâ medicina geografiâ seriâsy)

   Following the call to mobilize studies of social-ecological systems and sociotechnical systems, the paper presents the case for studying integrated social-ecological-technological systems (SETS), and dynamic systems that include social, natural and technological (engineering) elements. Using the case study of informal roads in the Baikal region, authors of the article argue that re-focusing on SETS creates additional synergies and convergence options to improve the understanding of coupled systems and infrastructure in particular. Historically, transportation infrastructure has contributed to changes in natural and social systems of Northern Eurasia: Transsiberian and Baikal-Amur railroads and East Siberia – Pacific Ocean and Power of Siberia pipelines have been the main drivers of social-ecological transitions. At the local scale, informal roads serve as one of the most illustrative and characteristic examples of SETS. The examination of development and transformation of the informal roads allows exploring the interactions between socioeconomic processes, ecological dynamics and technological advances. The variety of informal roads reflects the importance of specific social, natural or technological factors in the SETS transformation largely unconditioned by policy and regulations thus providing a unique opportunity to better understand sustainability challenges facing infrastructure-based SETS. Relying on interviews and in-situ observations conducted in 2019 in the Baikal region, the following factors affecting sustainability of informal road SETS were identified: social (identification of actors involved in location, construction, maintenance, use and abandonment of informal roads), technological (road cover, width, frequency and nature of use by different kinds of vehicles), environmental (geomorphology and landscape sensitivity and vulnerability). The sustainability challenges of SETS development and transformations are found in changing mobility practices, social structure and economies of local communities, increased occurrences of forest fires and development of erosion and permafrost degradation in local environment and push for development of new technologies of transportation and communication. 

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4. Changing cropland in changing climates: quantifying two decades of global cropland changes

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acca97  

   Kennedy, Jennifer ; Hurtt, George C. ; Liang, Xin-Zhong ; Chini, Louise ; Ma, Lei ( May 2023 , Environmental Research Letters)

   Climate change is impacting global crop productivity, and agricultural land suitability is predicted to significantly shift in the future. Responses to changing conditions and increasing yield variability can range from altered management strategies to outright land use conversions that may have significant environmental and socioeconomic ramifications. However, the extent to which agricultural land use changes in response to variations in climate is unclear at larger scales. Improved understanding of these dynamics is important since land use changes will have consequences not only for food security but also for ecosystem health, biodiversity, carbon storage, and regional and global climate. In this study, we combine land use products derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer with climate reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis v5 to analyze correspondence between changes in cropland and changes in temperature and water availability from 2001 to 2018. While climate trends explained little of the variability in land cover changes, increasing temperature, extreme heat days, potential evaporation, and drought severity were associated with higher levels of cropland loss. These patterns were strongest in regions with more cropland change, and generally reflected underlying climate suitability—they were amplified in hotter and drier regions, and reversed direction in cooler and wetter regions. At national scales, climate response patterns varied significantly, reflecting the importance of socioeconomic, political, and geographic factors, as well as differences in adaptation strategies. This global-scale analysis does not attempt to explain local mechanisms of change but identifies climate-cropland patterns that exist in aggregate and may be hard to perceive at local scales. It is intended to supplement regional studies, providing further context for locally-observed phenomena and highlighting patterns that require further analysis.

    

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5. Institutions, Voids, and Dependencies: Tracing the Designs and Robustness of Urban Water Systems

   https://doi.org/10.4000/irpp.3455  

   Deslatte, Aaron ; Koebele, Elizabeth A. ; Bartels, Lauren ; Wiechman, Adam ; Vicario, Sara Alonso ; Coughlin, Celeste ; Rybolt, Desi ( July 2023 , International Review of Public Policy)

   Urban water systems across the United States are facing a variety of challenges to existing supply and demand dynamics. Responding to these challenges and working toward sustainability in these complex socio-environmental systems (SES) requires integrating various types of information – ranging from hydrologic data to political considerations and beyond – into policy and management decisions. However, the design of institutions, i.e. the formal rules in which urban water utilities are embedded, impact the flow of various types of information, especially across diverse actor groups critical to developing and implementing policy. Drawing on a neuroscience-informed Bayesian application of the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, this study examines the institutional designs of two urban U.S. water systems. It aims to advance our understanding of these systems by: A) theoretically linking cognitive science and its action-oriented predictive processing approach to the institutional configurations that shape collective-action; and B) identifying potential institutional dependencies and voids that may limit the use of formalized climate-related guidance in systems facing increased risks. We utilize process-tracing along with an institutional analysis approach called the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) to parse the institutions into their semantic and syntactic components, identifying institutional dependencies, voids, or conflicts which may influence long-range performance of the systems. Our findings have important implications for the (re)design of institutions that better facilitate the flow of information among key policy actors and support policy changes that promote sustainable long-term urban water supply. 

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