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Abstract Social connections among individuals are essential components of social‐ecological systems (SESs), enabling people to take actions to more effectively adapt or transform in response to widespread social‐ecological change. Although scholars have associated social connections and cognitions with adaptive capacity, measuring actors' social networks may further clarify pathways for bolstering resilience‐enhancing actions.We asked how social networks and socio‐cognitions, as components of adaptive capacity, and SES regime shift severity affect individual landscape management behaviours using a quantitative analysis of ego network survey data from livestock producers and landcover data on regime shift severity (i.e. juniper encroachment) in the North American Great Plains.Producers who experienced severe regime shifts or perceived high risks from such shifts were not more likely to engage in transformative behaviour like prescribed burning. Instead, we found that social network characteristics explained significant variance in transformative behaviours.Policy implications: Our results indicate that social networks enable behaviours that have the potential to transform SESs, suggesting possible leverage points for enabling capacity and coordination toward sustainability. Particularly where private lands dominate and cultural practices condition regime shifts, clarifying how social connections promote resilience may provide much needed insight to bolster adaptive capacities in the face of global change. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.
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Leveraging federalism for flexible and robust management of social‐ecological systems
Abstract Managing social‐ecological systems (SES) requires balancing the need to tailor actions to local heterogeneity and the need to work over large areas to accommodate the extent of SES. This balance is particularly challenging for policy since the level of government where the policy is being developed determines the extent and resolution of action.We make the case for a new research agenda focused on ecological federalism that seeks to address this challenge by capitalizing on the flexibility afforded by a federalist system of governance. Ecological federalism synthesizes the environmental federalism literature from law and economics with relevant ecological and biological literature to address a fundamental question: What aspects of SES should be managed by federal governments and which should be allocated to decentralized state governments?This new research agenda considers the bio‐geo‐physical processes that characterize state‐federal management tradeoffs for biodiversity conservation, resource management, infectious disease prevention, and invasive species control. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2009103
- PAR ID:
- 10405023
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- People and Nature
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2575-8314
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 446-454
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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