One of the greatest challenges when addressing issues in complex social-ecological systems (SES), is the need for an efficient interdisciplinary framework when large-magnitude social and ecological disturbances occur. Teams comprising of scientists from different backgrounds and disciplines are frequently called upon to propose research methods and results that can be useful for policy and decision makers. However, most of the outcomes from these pluri-disciplinary teams appear extremely difficult to implement within a bigger picture because concepts, hypotheses, methods, and results are specific to each discipline. Here, we propose a reverse-engineering (RE) method to define the scientific needs that could help policy makers and citizens to assess the impacts of socioeconomic "disruptors" on social-ecological systems. We present this method using the example of an ongoing wood biomass energy plant (Gardanne) in the French Mediterranean region. In the Mediterranean region, species diversity is high, the forest cover is ample, but difficult access and low forest productivity make any biomass policy an ecological and social disruption. Our method is based on three complementary approaches to (1) describe the social-ecosystems, (2) draw up a map of interactions between actors and the impacts on the ecosystem, and (3) identify relevant questions needed for a global analysis of the impacts and potentialities of adaptation of actors and the ecosystems to the perturbation and the connections needed between the different disciplines. Our analysis showed that knowledge gaps have to be filled to assess forest resource vulnerability and better estimate how the different resource used (solid wood, biomass, landscape) competed together. Finally, we discuss how this method could be integrated into a broader transdisciplinary work allowing a coproduction of knowledge and solutions on a SES.

中文翻译：

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使用社会经济系统分析来定义科学需求：逆向工程方法应用于将燃煤发电厂转化为木质生物质发电厂

在解决复杂社会生态系统 (SES) 中的问题时，最大的挑战之一是在发生大规模社会和生态干扰时需要一个有效的跨学科框架。由来自不同背景和学科的科学家组成的团队经常被要求提出对政策制定者和决策者有用的研究方法和结果。然而，这些多学科团队的大部分成果似乎极难在更大的范围内实施，因为概念、假设、方法和结果是特定于每个学科的。在这里，我们提出了一种逆向工程 (RE) 方法来定义可以帮助决策者和公民评估社会经济“破坏者”对社会生态系统的影响的科学需求。我们以法国地中海地区一个正在进行的木质生物质能源工厂 (Gardanne) 为例介绍了这种方法。在地中海地区，物种多样性高，森林覆盖率高，但难以进入和森林生产力低下，使任何生物量政策都成为生态和社会破坏。我们的方法基于三种互补的方法，以 (1) 描述社会生态系统，(2) 绘制参与者之间的相互作用及其对生态系统的影响的地图，以及 (3) 确定全球分析所需的相关问题行动者和生态系统适应扰动的影响和潜力以及不同学科之间所需的联系。我们的分析表明，必须填补知识空白以评估森林资源的脆弱性并更好地估计所使用的不同资源（实木、生物量、景观）如何共同竞争。最后，我们讨论如何将这种方法整合到更广泛的跨学科工作中，从而在 SES 上共同生产知识和解决方案。