Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Panarchy Theory For Convergence, Shana M. Sundstrom, David G. Angeler, Jesse Bell, Michael J. Hayes, Jennifer Hodbod, Babak Jalalzadeh‑Fard, Rezaul Mahmood, Elizabeth Vanwormer, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Coping with surprise and uncertainty resulting from the emergence of undesired and unexpected novelty or the sudden reorganization of systems at multiple spatiotemporal scales requires both a scientific process that can incorporate diverse expertise and viewpoints, and a scientific framework that can account for the structure and dynamics of interacting social-ecological systems (SES) and the inherent uncertainty of what might emerge in the future. We argue that combining a convergence scientific process with a panarchy framework provides a pathway for improving our understanding of, and response to, emergence. Emergent phenomena are often unexpected (e.g., pandemics, regime shifts) and can be …

Connecting Distinct Realms Along Multiple Dimensions: A Meta-Ecosystem Resilience Perspective, David G. Angeler, Jani Heino, Juan Rubio-Ríos, J. Jesús Casas

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Resilience research is central to confront the sustainability challenges to ecosystems and human societies in a rapidly changing world. Given that social-ecological problems span the entire Earth system, there is a critical need for resilience models that account for the connectivity across intricately linked ecosystems (i.e., freshwater, marine, terrestrial, atmosphere). We present a resilience perspective of meta-ecosystems that are connected through the flow of biota, matter and energy within and across aquatic and terrestrial realms, and the atmosphere. We demonstrate ecological resilience sensu Holling using aquatic-terrestrial linkages and riparian ecosystems more generally. A discussion of applications in riparian ecology and …

Panarchy Suggests Why Management Mitigates Rather Than Restores Ecosystems From Anthropogenic Impact, David G. Angeler, Ran Hur

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Panarchy, a model of dynamic systems change at multiple, interconnected spatiotemporal scales, allows assessing whether management influences ecological processes and resilience. We assessed whether liming, a management action to counteract anthropogenic acidification, influenced scale-specific temporal fluctuation frequencies of benthic invertebrates and phytoplankton assemblages in lakes. We also tested whether these fluctuations correlated with proxies of liming (Ca:Mg ratios) to quantify scale-specific management effects. Using an ecosystem experiment and monitoring data, time series analyses (1998–2019) revealed significant multiscale temporal (and thus panarchy) structure for littoral invertebrates across limed and reference lakes. Such patterns were inconsistent for sublittoral invertebrates and phytoplankton. When …

The Emergence Of Convergence, Shana M. Sundstrom, David G. Angeler, Jessica G. Ernakovich, Jorge H. Garcıá, Joseph A. Hamm, Orville Huntington, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Science is increasingly a collaborative pursuit. Although the modern scientific enterprise owes much to individuals working at the core of their field, humanity is increasingly confronted by highly complex problems that require the integration of a variety of disciplinary and methodological expertise. In 2016, the U.S. National Science Foundation launched an initiative prioritizing support for convergence research as a means of “solving vexing research problems, in particular, complex problems focusing on societal needs.” We discuss our understanding of the objectives of convergence research and describe in detail the conditions and processes likely to generate successful convergence research. We use our …

Adaptation, Transformation And Resilience In Healthcare Comment On “Government Actions And Their Relation To Resilience In Healthcare During The Covid-19 Pandemic In New South Wales, Australia And Ontario, Canada”, David G. Angeler, Harris A. Eyre, Michael Berk, Craig R. Allen, William Hynes, Igor Linkov

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Adaptive capacity is a critical component of building resilience in healthcare (RiH). Adaptive capacity comprises the ability of a system to cope with and adapt to disturbances. However, “shocks,” such as the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, can potentially exceed critical adaptation thresholds and lead to systemic collapse. To effectively manage healthcare systems during periods of crises, both adaptive and transformative changes are necessary. This commentary discusses adaptation and transformation as two complementary, integral components of resilience and applies them to healthcare. We treat resilience as an emergent property of complex systems that accounts for multiple, often disparately distinct …

Tracking Spatial Regimes In Animal Communities: Implications For Resilience-Based Management, C. P. Roberts, D. Uden, C. Allen, D. G. Angler, L. A. Powell, B. Allred, J. D. Maestas, R. Twidwell Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fourteen Propositions For Resilience, Fourteen Years Later, Morgan Mathisonslee, Steven J. Lade, Conor Barnes, Karina Benessaiah, Erin T.H. Crockett, Andrea S. Downing, Julie A. Fowler, Rachel Belisle-Toler, Shubhechchha Sharma, Klara J. Winkler

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

In 2006, Walker et al. published an article titled, “A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-ecological Systems.” The article was incorporated into the Ecology and Society special feature, Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems. Walker et al. identified five heuristics and posed 14 propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems. At the time, the authors hoped the paper would promote experimentation, critique, and application of these ideas in resilience and social-ecological systems research. To determine the extent to which these propositions have achieved the authors’ hopes, we reviewed the scientific literature on socialecological systems since the …

Social Vulnerability, Social-Ecological Resilience And Coastal Governance, J. Jozaei, W. Chuang, C. Allen, A. Garmestani

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resilience Of Working Agricultural Landscapes, S. Sundstrom, C. Allen, J. Hodbod

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Scales Of Coercion: Resilience, Regimes, And Panarchy, D. Angeler, C. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Targeted Grazing And Mechanical Thinning Enhance Forest Stand Resilience Under A Narrow Range Of Wildfire Scenarios, V. M. Donovan, C. P. Roberts, D. T. Fogarty, David A. Wedin, D. Twidwell

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resilience Through Climate Services, A.M.S. Ibarra, C. Hewitt, Y. T. Winarto, S. Walker, V. W. Keener, J. Bayala, I. Christel, H. Bloomfield, K. Halsnaes, T. Haigh, D. Jacob, G. P. Brasseur, B. Van Den Hurk

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Untapped Capacity For Resilience In Environmental Law, Ahjond Garmestani, J. B. Ruhl, Brian C. Chaffin, Robin K. Craig, Helena F.M.W. Van Rijswick, David G. Angeler, Carl Folke, Lance Gunderson, Dirac Twidwell, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to enhance socialecological resilience and by using those laws to allow socialecological systems to adapt and transform. Legal and policy research to date has largely overlooked this potential, even though it offers a more expedient approach to addressing environmental change than waiting …

Discontinuity Analysis Reveals Alternative Community Regimes During Phytoplankton Succession, David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr., Monika Winder

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

It is well-recognized in plankton ecology that phytoplankton development can lead to distinct peaks (i.e., blooms) during spring and summer. We used a 5-year (2007–2011) phytoplankton data set and utilized discontinuity analysis to assess resilience attributes of spring and summer blooms based on the cross-scale resilience model. Using the size structure (i.e., cross-scale structure as an indicator of resilience) in the sampled plankton data, we assessed whether spring and summer blooms differ substantially between but not within blooms; that is, whether they comprise alternative community regimes. Our exploratory study supported this expectation and more broadly resilience theory, which posits that …

Convergence Science In The Anthropocene: Navigating The Known And Unknown, David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Ana Carnaval

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

1. Rapidly changing ecological and social systems currently pose significant societal challenges. Navigating the complexity of social-ecological change requires ap- proaches able to cope with, and potentially solve, both foreseen and unforeseen societal challenges.

2. The emergent field of convergence addresses the intricacies of such challenges, and is thus relevant to a broad range of interdisciplinary issues.

3. This paper suggests a way to conceptualize convergence research. It discusses how it relates to two major societal challenges (adaptation, transformation), and to the generation of policy-relevant science. It also points out limitations to the further development of convergence research.

Early Warnings For State Transitions, Caleb P. Roberts, Dirac Twidwell, Jessica L. Burnett, Victoria M. Donovan, Carissa L. Wonkka, Christine L. Bielski, Ahjond S. Garmestani, David G. Angeler, Tarsha Eason, Brady W. Allred, Matthew O. Jones, David E. Naugle, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

New concepts have emerged in theoretical ecology with the intent to quantify complexities in ecological change that are unaccounted for in state-and-transition models and to provide applied ecologists with statistical early warning metrics able to predict and prevent state transitions. With its rich history of furthering ecological theory and its robust and broad-scale monitoring frameworks, the rangeland discipline is poised to empirically assess these newly proposed ideas while also serving as early adopters of novel statistical metrics that provide advanced warning of a pending shift to an alternative ecological regime. We review multivariate early warning and regime shift detection metrics, …

Enhancing Quantitative Approaches For Assessing Community Resilience, W. C. Chuang, A. Garmestani, T. N. Eason, T. L. Spanbauer, H. B. Fried-Peterson, C. P. Roberts, S. M. Sundstrom, J. L. Burnett, D. G. Angeler, B. C. Chaffin, L. Gunderson, D. Twidwell, C. R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Scholars from many different intellectual disciplines have attempted to measure, estimate, or quantify resilience. However, there is growing concern that lack of clarity on the operationalization of the concept will limit its application. In this paper, we discuss the theory, research development and quantitative approaches in ecological and community resilience. Upon noting the lack of methods that quantify the complexities of the linked human and natural aspects of community resilience, we identify several promising approaches within the ecological resilience tradition that may be useful in filling these gaps. Further, we discuss the challenges for consolidating these approaches into a more …

Tiered Approach To Resilience Assessment, Igor Linkov, Cate Fox-Lent, Laura Read, Craig R. Allen, James C. Arnott, Emanuele Bellini, Jon Coaffee, Marie-Valentine Florin, Kirk Hatfield, Iain Hyde, William Hynes, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Roger Kasperson, John Katzenberger, Patrick W. Keys, James H. Lambert, Richard Moss, Peter S. Murdoch, Jose Palma-Oliveira, Roger S. Pulwarty, Dale Sands, Edward A. Thomas, Mari R. Tye, David Woods

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Regulatory agencies have long adopted a three-tier framework for risk assessment. We build on this structure to propose a tiered approach for resilience assessment that can be integrated into the existing regulatory processes. Comprehensive approaches to assessing resilience at appropriate and operational scales, reconciling analytical complexity as needed with stakeholder needs and resources available, and ultimately creating actionable recommendations to enhance resilience are still lacking. Our proposed framework consists of tiers by which analysts can select resilience assessment and decision support tools to inform associated management actions relative to the scope and urgency of the risk and the capacity of …

The Distribution And Role Of Functional Abundance In Cross‐Scale Resilience, Shana M. Sundstrom, David G. Angeler, Chris Barichievy, Tarsha Eason, Ahjond Garmestani, Lance Gunderson, Melinda Knutson, Kirsty L. Nash, Trisha Spanbauer, Craig Stow, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The cross-scale resilience model suggests that system-level ecological resilience emerges from the distribution of species’ functions within and across the spatial and temporal scales of a system. It has provided a quantitative method for calculating the resilience of a given system and so has been a valuable contribution to a largely qualitative field. As it is currently laid out, the model accounts for the spatial and temporal scales at which environmental resources and species are present and the functional roles species play but does not inform us about how much resource is present or how much function is provided. In …

Evaluating The Efficacy Of Adaptive Management Approaches: Is There A Formula For Success?, Jamie E. Mcfadden, Tim L. Hiller, Andrew J. Tyre

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Within the field of natural-resources management, the application of adaptive management is appropriate for complex problems high in uncertainty. Adaptive management is becoming an increasingly popular management-decision tool within the scientific community and has developed into two primary schools of thought: the Resilience-Experimentalist School (with high emphasis on stakeholder involvement, resilience, and highly complex models) and the Decision-Theoretic School (which results in relatively simple models through emphasizing stakeholder involvement for identifying management objectives). Because of these differences, adaptive management plans implemented under each of these schools may yield varying levels of success. We evaluated peer-reviewed literature focused on incorporation of …