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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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Past human‐induced ecological legacies as a driver of modern Amazonian resilience
Abstract People have modified landscapes throughout the Holocene (the lastc. 11,700 years) by modifying soils, burning forests, cultivating and domesticating plants, and directly and indirectly enriched and depleted plant abundances. These activities also took place in Amazonia, which is the largest contiguous piece of rainforest in the world, and for many decades was considered to have very little human impact until the modern era.The compositional shift caused by past human disturbances can alter forest traits, creating ecological legacies that may persist through time. As the lifespan of most Amazonian tree species is more than 200 years, forests that were modified over the last centuries to millennia are likely still in a mid‐successional state.Ecological legacies resulting from past human activity may also affect modern forest resilience to ongoing anthropogenic and climatic changes.Current estimates of resilience assume that forests are in equilibrium, and long‐term successional trajectories are not considered.We suggest that disturbance histories, generated through palaeoecological and archaeological surveys, should be paired with field‐based and remotely sensed estimates of forest resilience to recent drought events, to determine whether past human activities affect modern forest resilience. We have outlined how this can be accomplished in future research. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2148984
- PAR ID:
- 10443385
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- People and Nature
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2575-8314
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1415-1429
- Size(s):
- p. 1415-1429
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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