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1. Complex adaptive systems science in the era of global sustainability crisis

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geosus.2024.09.011  

   An, Li; Turner, BL; Liu, Jianguo; Grimm, Volker; Zhang, Qi; Wang, Zhangyang; Huang, Ruihong (November 2024, Geography and Sustainability)

   A significant number and range of challenges besetting sustainability can be traced to the actions and interactions of multiple autonomous agents (people mostly) and the entities they create (e.g., institutions, policies, social network) in the corresponding social-environmental systems (SES). To address these challenges, we need to understand decisions made and actions taken by agents, the outcomes of their actions, including the feedbacks on the corresponding agents and environment. The science of complex adaptive systems—CAS science—has a significant potential to handle such challenges. We address the advantages of CAS science for sustainability by identifying the key elements and challenges in sustainability science, the generic features of CAS, and the key advances and challenges in modeling CAS. Artificial intelligence and data science combined with agent-based modeling promise to improve understanding of agents’ behaviors, detect SES structures, and formulate SES mechanisms. 

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2. Sustainability challenges for the social-environmental systems across the Asian Drylands Belt

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac472f  

   Chen, Jiquan; John, Ranjeet; Yuan, Jing; Mack, Elizabeth A; Groisman, Pavel; Allington, Ginger; Wu, Jianguo; Fan, Peilei; de Beurs, Kirsten M; Karnieli, Arnon; et al (January 2022, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract This paper synthesizes the contemporary challenges for the sustainability of the social-environmental system (SES) across a geographically, environmentally, and geopolitically diverse region—the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB). This region includes 18 political entities, covering 10.3% of global land area and 30% of total global drylands. At the present time, the ADB is confronted with a unique set of environmental and socioeconomic changes including water shortage-related environmental challenges and dramatic institutional changes since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The SES of the ADB is assessed using a conceptual framework rooted in the three pillars of sustainability science: social, economic, and ecological systems. The complex dynamics are explored with biophysical, socioeconomic, institutional, and local context-dependent mechanisms with a focus on institutions and land use and land cover change (LULCC) as important drivers of SES dynamics. This paper also discusses the following five pressing, practical challenges for the sustainability of the ADB SES: (a) reduced water quantity and quality under warming, drying, and escalating extreme events, (b) continued, if not intensifying, geopolitical conflicts, (c) volatile, uncertain, and shifting socioeconomic structures, (d) globalization and cross-country influences, and (e) intensification and shifts in LULCC. To meet the varied challenges across the region, place-based, context-dependent transdisciplinary approaches are needed to focus on the human-environment interactions within and between regional landscapes with explicit consideration of specific forcings and regulatory mechanisms. Future work focused on this region should also assess the role of the following mechanisms that may moderate SES dynamics: socioeconomic regulating mechanisms, biophysical regulating mechanisms, regional and national institutional regulating mechanisms, and localized institutional regulating mechanisms. 

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3. How Can Participating in a Forest Community and Citizen Science Program Support Elementary School Students’ Understanding of Socio-Ecological Systems?

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su152416832  

   Yan, Shulong; Race, Alexandra I; Ballard, Heidi L; Bird, Erin; Henson, Sol; Portier, Evan F; Lindell, Amanda; Ghadiri_Khanaposhtani, Maryam; Miller, Jadda M; Schectman, Emma R (December 2023, Sustainability)

   In the face of the climate crisis, sustainability education must include a focus on understandings of socio-ecological systems (SES) and applying systems thinking (ST) skills. This study investigates a Community and Citizen Science (CCS) program designed for elementary school students to collect forest data to better understand their SES and gain insights into wildfire management in a California region recently ravaged by wildfires. We examine the development of fourth-grade students’ systems thinking skills and understandings of SES, seeing these as crucial components toward fostering agency with science to support climate resilience. We found that students were capable of recognizing the intricate impacts of wildfires on interconnected human and ecological systems and demonstrated varying levels of proficiency in systems thinking skills. This place-based CCS program cultivated knowledge and skills in young learners that may contribute to better socio-ecological resilience and proactive sustainability efforts. 

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4. Beyond the matrix: Experimental approaches to studying cognitive agents in social-ecological systems

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105993  

   Hertz, Uri; Köster, Raphael; Janssen, Marco A; Leibo, Joel Z (January 2025, Cognition)

   Studying social-ecological systems, in which agents interact with each other and their environment are important both for sustainability applications and for understanding how human cognition functions in context. In such systems, the environment shapes the agents' experience and actions, and in turn collective action of agents changes social and physical aspects of the environment. Here we review current investigation approaches, which rely on a lean design, with discrete actions and outcomes and little scope for varying environmental parameters and cognitive demands. We then introduce a multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) approach, which builds on modern artificial intelligence techniques, and provides new avenues to model complex social worlds, while preserving more of their characteristics, and allowing them to capture a variety of social phenomena. These techniques can be fed back to the laboratory where they make it easier to design experiments in complex social situations without compromising their tractability for computational modeling. We showcase the potential MARL by discussing several recent studies that have used it, detailing the way environmental settings and cognitive constraints can lead to the emergence of complex cooperation strategies. This novel approach can help researchers bring together insights from human cognition, sustainability, and AI, to tackle real world problems of social-ecological systems. 

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5. Ancestral Computing for Sustainability: Centering Indigenous Epistemologies in Researching Computer Science Education

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00820-y  

   López-Quiñones, Alyssa; Martinez-Lopez, Marlen; Moreno Sandoval, Cueponcaxochitl D.; Carroll-Miranda, Joseph; Lindala, April E.; Chatman, Michelle C.; Fleming, Jeffery; Shockley, Ebony Terrell; Cadeau, Denise; Flores-Reyes, Elizabeth (January 2023, TechTrends)

   Michael Lachney and Aman Yadav, Special issue (Ed.)

   This article offers Ancestral Computing for Sustainability (ACS) to dismantle the logics of settler colonialism that affect accessibility, identities, and epistemologies of computer science education (CSE). ACS centers Indigenous epistemologies in researching CSE across four public universities in the United States. This paper describes Ancestral Computing for Sustainability and explores reflections of two students engaging as researchers in ACS inquiry. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies and Participatory Action Research, they share their reflections as co-researchers in ACS through storywork. These critical reflections include their relationship to computing, observations of the interdependent work within ACS, ethics and sustainability, and their experiences within the focus groups. The article ends with recommendations for furthering ACS as a decolonial approach that centers Indigenous epistemologies in CSE. Recommendations for CSE education include Ancestral Knowledge Systems and adding sustainability as a topic within computing education pathways and building student-faculty relationships based on trust is recommended to foster students’ academic and personal growth within CSE education and research. 

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