scholarly journals Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260159
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Law ◽  
John D. C. Linnell ◽  
Bram van Moorter ◽  
Erlend B. Nilsen
Keyword(s):  
Climatic Variability ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Optimal Harvest ◽  
Wildlife Harvest

Sustainable wildlife harvest is challenging due to the complexity of uncertain social-ecological systems, and diverse stakeholder perspectives of sustainability. In these systems, semi-complex stochastic simulation models can provide heuristics that bridge the gap between highly simplified theoretical models and highly context-specific case-studies. Such heuristics allow for more nuanced recommendations in low-knowledge contexts, and an improved understanding of model sensitivity and transferability to novel contexts. We develop semi-complex Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) models capturing dynamics and variability in ecological processes, monitoring, decision-making, and harvest implementation, under a diverse range of contexts. Results reveal the fundamental challenges of achieving sustainability in wildlife harvest. Environmental contexts were important in determining optimal harvest parameters, but overall, evaluation contexts more strongly influenced perceived outcomes, optimal harvest parameters and optimal harvest strategies. Importantly, simple composite metrics popular in the theoretical literature (e.g. focusing on maximizing yield and population persistence only) often diverged from more holistic composite metrics that include a wider range of population and harvest objectives, and better reflect the trade-offs in real world applied contexts. While adaptive harvest strategies were most frequently preferred, particularly for more complex environmental contexts (e.g. high uncertainty or variability), our simulations map out cases where these heuristics may not hold. Despite not always being the optimal solution, overall adaptive harvest strategies resulted in the least value forgone, and are likely to give the best outcomes under future climatic variability and uncertainty. This demonstrates the potential value of heuristics for guiding applied management.

Sustainability of wildlife harvest in stochastic social-ecological systems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Law ◽  
John D C Linnell ◽  
Bram Van Moorter ◽  
Erlend B. Nilsen
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Models ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Multiple Objectives ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Singular Optimum ◽  
Wildlife Harvest ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

1.Sustainable wildlife harvest is challenged by complex and uncertain social-ecological systems, and diverse stakeholder perspectives. Heuristics could provide one avenue to integrate scientific principles and understand potential conflict in data-poor harvest systems. Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) can be a useful tool to explore harvest options and implications from diverse perspectives, and aid in heuristic development.2.We ran 176,910 stochastic simulation models to develop heuristics for sustainability in wildlife harvest systems. Environmental contexts included three simulated species distributed across the slow-fast life-history gradient (the great-unicorn, lesser-unicorn, and phoenix), two variability/uncertainty levels, and three starting population sizes. Optimal outcomes from four harvest strategies (constant, proportional, threshold-proportional, and threshold-increasing-proportional) were assessed under evaluation contexts reflecting multiple environmental, harvester, manager and societal sustainability objectives and ethical perspectives.3.The results reveal fundamental challenges in obtaining sustainable outcomes in harvest systems: few scenarios produced good scores across all evaluation metrics and ethical perspectives. Composite evaluation metric sets and ethical perspectives strongly influenced perceived outcomes. Rawlsian ethical perspectives (considering the minimum score of multiple objectives) often revealed severe trade-offs between individual metrics, even when Utilitarian ethical perspectives (averaging scores of multiple objectives) view the same scenarios positively. Simple composite metrics popular in the theoretical literature often diverged from the holistic metrics that better reflect applied contexts.4.Threshold and proportional systems performed better than constant harvest under Utilitarian ethics in 79-90% of cases, and 34-39% of cases with Rawlsian ethics. However, no strategy was optimal overall: each harvest system tested was near-optimal in at least one evaluation context in every environmental context.5.Synthesis and applications. Given a lack of a singular optimum strategy, we recommend harvest systems should be chosen with clear reference to contextually appropriate metrics and ethics of interest when optimizing harvest systems for sustainability. Importantly, management recommendations focused on maximizing harvest should be treated with skepticism if this is not explicitly identified as a key value for that socio-ecological system.

scholarly journals Cross-Scale Value Trade-Offs in Managing Social-Ecological Systems: The Politics of Scale in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asim Zia ◽  
Paul Hirsch ◽  
Alexander Songorwa ◽  
David R. Mutekanga ◽  
Sheila O'Connor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Politics Of Scale ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Ruaha National Park

scholarly journals Monitoring social–ecological networks for biodiversity and ecosystem services in human-dominated landscapes

FACETS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1670-1692
Author(s):  
Carina Rauen Firkowski ◽  
Amanda M. Schwantes ◽  
Marie-Josée Fortin ◽  
Andrew Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Maple Syrup ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Analytical Tools

The demand the human population is placing on the environment has triggered accelerated rates of biodiversity change and created trade-offs among the ecosystem services we depend upon. Decisions designed to reverse these trends require the best possible information obtained by monitoring ecological and social dimensions of change. Here, we conceptualize a network framework to monitor change in social–ecological systems. We contextualize our framework within Ostrom’s social–ecological system framework and use it to discuss the challenges of monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services across spatial and temporal scales. We propose that spatially explicit multilayer and multiscale monitoring can help estimate the range of variability seen in social–ecological systems with varying levels of human modification across the landscape. We illustrate our framework using a conceptual case study on the ecosystem service of maple syrup production. We argue for the use of analytical tools capable of integrating qualitative and quantitative knowledge of social–ecological systems to provide a causal understanding of change across a network. Altogether, our conceptual framework provides a foundation for establishing monitoring systems. Operationalizing our framework will allow for the detection of ecosystem service change and assessment of its drivers across several scales, informing the long-term sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

scholarly journals Linking resilience and robustness and uncovering their trade-offs in coupled infrastructure systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1159-1168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Homayounfar ◽  
Rachata Muneepeerakul ◽  
John M. Anderies ◽  
Chitsomanus P. Muneepeerakul
Keyword(s):  
Coupled System ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Internal Stresses ◽  
Public Infrastructure ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Long Run

Abstract. Robustness and resilience are concepts in systems thinking that have grown in importance and popularity. For many complex social-ecological systems, however, robustness and resilience are difficult to quantify and the connections and trade-offs between them difficult to study. Most studies have either focused on qualitative approaches to discuss their connections or considered only one of them under particular classes of disturbances. In this study, we present an analytical framework to address the linkage between robustness and resilience more systematically. Our analysis is based on a stylized dynamical model that operationalizes a widely used conceptual framework for social-ecological systems. The model enables us to rigorously delineate the boundaries of conditions under which the coupled system can be sustained in a long run, define robustness and resilience related to these boundaries, and consequently investigate their connections. The results reveal the trade-offs between robustness and resilience. They also show how the nature of such trade-offs varies with the choice of certain policies (e.g., taxation and investment in public infrastructure), internal stresses, and uncertainty in social-ecological settings.

scholarly journals Operationalizing the social-ecological systems framework to assess sustainability

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (19) ◽  
pp. 5979-5984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather M. Leslie ◽  
Xavier Basurto ◽  
Mateja Nenadovic ◽  
Leila Sievanen ◽  
Kyle C. Cavanaugh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Coupled System ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Aspects

Environmental governance is more effective when the scales of ecological processes are well matched with the human institutions charged with managing human–environment interactions. The social-ecological systems (SESs) framework provides guidance on how to assess the social and ecological dimensions that contribute to sustainable resource use and management, but rarely if ever has been operationalized for multiple localities in a spatially explicit, quantitative manner. Here, we use the case of small-scale fisheries in Baja California Sur, Mexico, to identify distinct SES regions and test key aspects of coupled SESs theory. Regions that exhibit greater potential for social-ecological sustainability in one dimension do not necessarily exhibit it in others, highlighting the importance of integrative, coupled system analyses when implementing spatial planning and other ecosystem-based strategies.

scholarly journals How Robust is Your System Resilience?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Homayounfar ◽  
Rachata Muneepeerakul ◽  
John M. Anderies
Keyword(s):  
Coupled System ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Internal Stresses ◽  
Public Infrastructure ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Long Run

Abstract. Robustness and resilience are concepts in systems thinking that have grown in importance and popularity. For many complex social-ecological systems, however, robustness and resilience are difficult to quantify and the connections and trade-offs between them difficult to study. Most studies have either focused on qualitative approaches to discuss their connections or considered only one of them under particular classes of disturbances. In this study, we present an analytical framework to address the linkage between robustness and resilience more systematically. Our analysis is based on a stylized dynamical model that operationalizes a widely used conceptual framework for social-ecological systems. The model enables us to rigorously delineate the boundaries of conditions under which the coupled system can be sustained in a long run, define robustness and resilience related to these boundaries, and consequently investigate their connections. The results reveal the tradeoffs between robustness and resilience. They also show how the nature of such tradeoffs varies with the choices of certain policies (e.g., taxation and investment in public infrastructure), internal stresses and external disturbances.

scholarly journals Social and Ecological Systems Resilience and Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 705-724
Author(s):  
Francois Bousquet ◽  
Tara Quinn ◽  
Clara Therville ◽  
Raphaël Mathevet ◽  
Olivier Barreteau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Distribution

In this chapter, the authors first introduce the notion of social-ecological systems (SES) resilience. They trace the history of the two concepts (SES and resilience), which are interdependent, narrating the interactions between groups of researchers who study social and ecological processes. In the second part of the paper, the authors examine resilience through the specific question of the identity of an SES and how this identity persists or changes. They examine the meaning of identity through a literature review that orients readers to the study of the process of resilience as inextricably shaped by the vulnerabilities embedded in the SES. They claim in this chapter that the disruption of the relationship between natural and social entities that compose an SES leads to a new distribution of vulnerabilities among the entities. After these changes, the SES will be ascribed a new identity that reflects the new distribution of vulnerabilities among the entities and the means to cope with them.

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