Dehesas and montados are Mediterranean agroforestry systems characterized by scattered oak trees with an understory grazed extensively by livestock and, in some cases, periodically cropped. A long history of traditional management practices has created an open woodland widely recognized for rich biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. Concerns about challenges to their long-term viability have

Though urban land covers only around 0.5% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, urbanization often leads to significant changes in land use and land cover. However, knowledge on the ecological and social outcomes of urbanization is largely fragmented across a multitude of local-level studies. We synthesized the outcomes of urbanization on 15 ecological and social variables associated with regional farming

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the positive influence of urban biodiversity on dwellers’ well-being is critical to inform sustainable management of urban greenspaces, but studies published to date on the role of biodiversity in mental restoration have provided contradictory results. Both urban greenspace biophysical characteristics and the emotional connection with the place may play a role

The participation of diverse actors and usage of traditional and local knowledge have been recognized as important for ecosystem management, including local biodiversity strategies and action plans (LBSAPs) implemented in municipalities. Assessing the effects and influences of the participation of diverse actors and usage of traditional and local knowledge requires analyses by a social-ecological system

Unsustainable models of growth-based development are pushing aquatic ecologies outside known historical ranges and destabilizing human activities that have long depended on them. We develop the concept of hydrosocial rupture to explore how human-water resource connections change when they are exposed to cumulative development pressures. The research analyzes stakeholder perceptions of hydrosocial ruptures

Research on ecosystem services has focused primarily on questions of availability or supply and often assumes a single human community of identical beneficiaries. However, how people perceive and experience ecosystem services can differ by socio-demographic characteristics such as material wealth, gender, education, and age. Equitable environmental management depends on understanding and accommodating

Adaptive capacity (AC) is a widely used concept denoting assets or resources that people or a system can draw upon to cope with environmental change. When applied to a community, careful definition and measurement of AC is essential for identifying patterns and generating findings that may be useful for policy and transferable to other places. We identified and compared measures of 22 indicators for

Debate about what proportion of the Earth to protect often overshadows the question of how nature should be conserved and by whom. We present a systematic review and narrative synthesis of 169 publications investigating how different forms of governance influence conservation outcomes, paying particular attention to the role played by Indigenous peoples and local communities. We find a stark contrast

Despite its status as a biodiversity hotspot, the renosterveld ecosystem within the Greater Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, widely lacks the implementation of measures for biodiversity conservation in the Swartland, even though management plans exist. Though formally protected by law, most renosterveld remnants occur on privately owned agricultural land and therefore depend on private land management

Wildfire is a major environmental hazard, yet the social and institutional aspects of wildfire risk management have received limited attention in the literature. Considering future climate change, changing demographics, and the increased demands on fire services more generally, there is an urgent need to better understand the significance of volunteers in emergency management. Volunteering brings together

To achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), actions are required at all global, national, and local scales. To ensure coordination between scales, local actions need to be carefully planned to be aligned with global and national priorities. Local planning for sustainability must be adaptive and heterogeneous but also consistent and driven by the community. We describe an approach

Digital echo chambers and filter bubbles are increasingly the subject of societal, political, and scientific discourse. However, the impact of these phenomena on nature conservation remains understudied. This study provides an explorative overview of the potential relevance of digital echo chambers and filter bubbles for nature conservation practice. For this purpose, data collected during a literature

In China, along with other countries in the Global South, the number of national parks is rapidly increasing. The primary objectives of this increase are to protect global biodiversity and ecosystem services. These national parks are often established in areas rich in biodiversity and abundant in cultural diversity. Current conservation policies and practices take some considerations of cultural ecosystem

Organic sheep milk production under a protected designation of origin for Roquefort cheese in Aveyron, France, has developed over the past several years. This niche market provides farmers with a favorable economic context due to high and stable milk prices. However, a variety of risks threatens this favorable context. This raises questions about driving factors behind resilience of organic dairy sheep

Research on the nonmaterial aspects of human-nature connections has grown steadily in recent years, yet efforts to understand nonmaterial connections between individuals and nature confront myriad challenges. We describe a set of three assumptions inherent in research on human-nature connections: (1) that the conceptions researchers are measuring exist inside a person’s head; (2) that individuals can

In a complex and turbulent world, there is heightened interest in managing for resilience. However, resilience guides, particularly those used in the development field, often lack a theoretical grounding in complex adaptive systems. There is a demand for guidance on how to operationalize complexity in applications of resilience, such as resilience assessment and planning. This study synthesizes lessons

Solutions to our most pressing environmental problems demand the development and application of leadership skills that are not typically fostered in traditional academic programs: skills that advance new transdisciplinary approaches to co-produce knowledge that can be mobilized for action. We outline a new collective leadership model with six dimensions, Inquire, Connect, Engage, Strategize, Empower

There is growing interest in the application of nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change and promote resilience, yet barriers exist to their implementation. These include a perceived lack of evidence of their functioning in comparison to conventional solutions and an inability for existing design, policy, and assessment processes to capture the multiple benefits of these solutions. Positing

Landscape genetic analyses of wildlife populations can exclude variation in a broad suite of potential spatiotemporal correlates, including consideration of how such variation might have similarly influenced people over time. Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) populations in what is now known as coastal British Columbia, Canada, provide an opportunity to examine the possible effects of a complex set of landscape

In African small-scale agriculture, sustainable land and water management (SLWM) is key to improving food production while coping with climate change. However, the rate of SLWM adoption remains low, suggesting a gap between generalized SLWM advantages for rural development across the literature, and the existence of context-dependent barriers to its effective implementation. Uganda is an example of

An important characteristic for the persistence of social-ecological systems (SESs) over time is the adaptation of local institutions to the dynamic of the resources on which they depend, especially when communities face resources with high spatial and temporal variability. Previous studies on Territorial User Rights for Fisheries (TURF) in Chile (?reas de Manejo y Explotaci?n de Recursos Bent?nicos

Resilience is increasingly used to inform natural hazard risk management. From global to national to local levels of governance and decision making, resilience concepts are becoming institutionalized and operationalized in both public and private domains. However, as these ideas have shifted from their origins in ecology and been adopted by other disciplines, policy makers, and practitioners, key insights

Historical records are incomplete templates for preparing for an uncertain future. The global utility of past ecological knowledge for present/future purposes is questioned as we move from Holocene to Anthropocene. To increase the adaptive capacity of today’s societies, generalizable strategies must be identified for coping with uncertainty over a wide range of conditions and contingencies. We identify

Colias myrmidone is extinct in most European countries of its historic range, and few populations remain in Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. In Romania, this butterfly occurs in traditional farming landscapes of Transylvania dominated by high nature value (HNV) grassland. Parts of these landscapes were recently designated as Natura 2000 areas. In this article, we share insights from our engagement in

South Africa is the third most biologically diverse country in the world. Urban living places pressure on this biodiversity and the ecosystem services that flow from it. Local governments are now internationally recognized as the level of government that is key to securing long-term global sustainability. The cities of Cape Town and Durban in South Africa have each developed their own biodiversity

Although protected areas (PAs) have long been considered a successful conservation strategy, more recent research has highlighted their ecological and sociological limitations. The extant PA network is constrained by land availability and exacerbates cultural, political, and social conflicts over access to resources. Consequently, the importance of private lands in playing a complementary role in conservation

Urban green spaces have gained attention because of their increasing relevance to human well-being in the context of challenges related to urbanization and climate change. Detailed, systematic, citywide assessments of specific urban green space characteristics that provide a sufficient understanding of resident interactions with green spaces and respective ecosystem service flows are lacking. We chose

Changing biophysical conditions due to amplified climate change in northern latitudes has significant implications for species’ habitat and populations and can dramatically alter interactions between harvesters and local resources. Tribal, regional, and state governments, federal agencies, and other local planning entities have begun documenting observations of changing harvest conditions and the information

The majority of the world’s population now lives in cities, where reduced levels of native biodiversity, coupled with fewer opportunities for people to experience nature, are expected to result in an urban public increasingly disconnected from the natural environment. Residential gardens have great potential to both support native species and allow people daily contact with nature. Embracing the epistemological

Mobile phones are recognized as important new tools for rural development in the Global South, but few studies have examined how phones can shape social networks. This study documents a new type of social tie, enabled by mobile phones, that to our knowledge has not previously been discussed in academic literature. In 2018, we discovered that Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania create new social

Large-scale fisheries are important social-ecological systems that are increasingly being threatened by global climate change. Adaptive capacity is key for moving fisheries onto climate resilient pathways, however, implementing policies to improve adaptive capacity is challenging given the many diverse stakeholders involved in fisheries. Previous research suggests social networks are integral to adaptive

Here, we introduce Wayfinder, a novel conceptual framework and a process design for resilience practice. Framed by the Anthropocene argument, and with an explicit social-ecological system focus, the purpose of Wayfinder is to help users navigate toward trajectories of sustainable development. We present the theoretical perspectives that underpin the Wayfinder framework, which draw together and synthesize

Marine fisheries represent a social-ecological system driven by both complex ecological processes and human interactions. Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires an understanding of both the biological and social components, and management failure can occur when either are excluded. Despite the significance of both, most research has focused on characterizing biological uncertainty rather than

Analyzing governance is particularly important for understanding and managing social-ecological systems (SES). Governance systems influence interactions between actors and the ecological system and are in turn influenced by the changes that occur in the actors’ and ecological systems. Agent-based models (ABM) are well adapted for studying SES, for exploring interactions and the resulting collective

Many water sustainability and governance issues around the world can be viewed as wicked problems, whereby a solution, even if quite broad and comprehensive, may be contested because of high complexity, uncertainty, and diverging perspectives. These types of issues and their contestation thus create a complex landscape of possible solutions, which we term a water governance “solutionscape.” We develop

Understanding opportunities as well as constraints for people to benefit from and take care of urban nature is an important step toward more sustainable cities. In order to explore, engage, and enable strategies to improve urban quality of life, we combine a social-ecological-technological systems framework with a flexible methodological approach to urban studies. The framework focuses on context dependencies

Urban green and blue space interventions may bring about unintended consequences, involving trade-offs between the different land uses, and indeed, between the needs of different urban inhabitants, land users, and owners. Such trade-offs include choices between green/blue and non-green/blue projects, between broader land sparing vs. land sharing patterns, between satisfying the needs of the different

Flood risk is a complex and transboundary issue that is expected to escalate with climate change and requires to be governed by collaborative networks of actors. Municipal administrations have been suggested to have a particularly important and challenging role in such governance. Although collaborative governance has attracted intense scientific attention, empirical studies generally focus either

Understanding the perceptions and management practices of local land users is critical to improve conservation programs and sustainable outcomes. Colombia, one of the most megadiverse countries in the world, is also the third largest global producer of coffee. Cafeteros (rural coffee farmers) produce the majority of Colombian coffee. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), Colombia, is an isolated

Protected natural areas are not free from noise, especially noise generated by traffic within park boundaries. Natural soundscapes are important for maintaining community structure, providing positive visitor experiences, and increasing visitor support for management actions that reduce impacts on natural resources. To test experimental quieting as a strategy to increase both wildlife habitat quality

In attempting to predict the impact of major ecological or climatic change on livelihoods, insights can be gained by looking at communities who experience extreme seasonal or annual variation. Here, we compare the ecology, economy, and social network of a community of traditional fishers in the Brazilian Pantanal between the dry season and the flood season in which their wetland ecosystem is transformed

Recent years have seen a proliferation of studies that use archetype analysis to better understand and to foster transitions toward sustainability. This growing literature reveals a common methodological ground, as well as a variety of perspectives and practices. In this paper, we provide an historical overview of the roots of archetype analysis from ancient philosophy to recent sustainability science

The identity of an ecological regime is central to modern resilience theory and our understanding of how systems collapse and reorganize following disturbance. However, resilience-based models used in ecosystem management have been criticized for their failure to integrate disturbance outcomes into regime identity. Assessments are needed to understand how well these classifications represent ecosystem

Varietal and genetic diversity sustain modern agriculture and is provided by breeding systems. Failures in these systems may cause insufficient responses to plant diseases, which threatens food security. To avoid these failures, an understanding of the governance challenges in providing varietal and genetic diversity is required. Previous studies acknowledge the complexity of seed breeding, framing

Stewardship has been increasingly used in the realm of conservation and sustainable land use as an important pathway for action. Ecosystem stewardship, a specific application of this concept, is an approach for natural resource management, but the lack of empirical examples is a shortcoming to its applicability. With this work, we aimed at investigating whether environmental initiatives taking place

Data availability challenges the management of small-scale fisheries in large river basins. One way to circumvent the challenges of data collection is to rely on local stakeholders who are well-positioned to collect data that can inform management through community-based monitoring (CBM). Although science and management has increasingly considered opportunities for community involvement in scientific

Climate change is a highly complex social-ecological problem characterized by system-type dynamics that are important to communicate in a variety of settings, ranging from formal education to decision makers to informal education of the general public. Educational games are one approach that may enhance systems thinking skills. This study used a randomized controlled experiment to compare the impact

Ecosystem services (ES) are heralded as an approach that communicates across disciplines and between researchers and resource managers, encouraging more environmentally sustainable human behavior. However, most studies presuppose that “values” are ontologically distinct from “ecosystem services” without examining what this framing enables and occludes about human and other-than-human relations. Through

Urban water managers face numerous challenges, including limited natural resources for maintenance of technical infrastructure, changing demography, and dramatic environmental degradation. Although the vision of the “water-sensitive city” helps to develop tools and strategies toward more sustainable urban water systems, it does not consider biodiversity effects. We therefore aimed to determine habitat

Transdisciplinarity involves knowledge co-production with non-academics. This co-production can be horizontal when equal consideration is given to the contributions from different knowledges and ways of knowing. However, asymmetric power relations and colonial patterns of behavior, which are deeply rooted in academic culture, may hinder horizontality. Using Icek Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior,

Long-term development of resource utilization has caused a series of economic, social, and ecological problems in resource-based cities (RBCs). Thus, in pursuit of sustainable urban development, many RBCs have begun seriously pursuing urban transformation and have achieved good results. However, the RBCs' urban resilience also exhibits evident stage characteristics throughout the processes of urban

Recently, climate change has had a considerable impact on rangelands, available forage, and shifting boundaries of ecological zones in Mongolia. Additionally, long-term studies in the forest-steppe zone show that increasing livestock pressure impacts vegetation composition and cover. Evidence shows that the traditional ecological knowledge of Mongolian herders can serve as a valuable body of information

The privatization of collectively used rangelands results in fragmentation of land use in pastoral areas. This affects pastoralists’ grazing strategies and results in new institutional arrangements for addressing changing social-ecological systems. Two main systems of grazing management have emerged in the pastoral regions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau that offer new perspectives on addressing rangeland

In classic resilience thinking, there is an implicit focus on controlling functional variation to maintain system stability. Modern approaches to resilience thinking deal with complex, adaptive system dynamics and true uncertainty; these contemporary frameworks involve the process of learning to live with change and make use of the consequences of transformation and development. In a socio-environmental

Local users may invest in managing common pool resources, thereby promoting social and ecological resilience. Institutional or economic limits on access are regarded as essential preconditions for incentivizing local investments, but we show that investment incentives can exist even under open access. We modeled a recreational harvest fishery in which local or centralized managers invest in fish stocking

Amidst an increasingly complex global environment of trade and travel, with heightened concerns for the unintended or deliberate spread of species and diseases, biosecurity is a key policy goal in many parts of the world. In Australia, there is concern that invasive species (plants, animals, and diseases) enter, spread, and establish, threatening local industries such as agriculture, as well as human

The popularity of viewing wildlife, specifically brown bears (Ursus arctos), is increasing rapidly throughout North America. In addition, population distributions of both humans and brown bears are expanding, creating larger areas of overlap and an increased possibility of human-bear interactions. In order to prevent negative encounters and injury to either species, park managers must continue to work

Researchers and development organizations regularly grapple with competing ecological and financial strategies for building climate resilience in smallholder agricultural systems, but rarely are such approaches considered in tandem. Using a social-ecological simulation model, we explored how different combinations of legume cover cropping, an ecological insurance, and index-based crop insurance, a

Invasive alien species are a serious threat to freshwater ecosystems and overall biodiversity. Although invasive alien species management in the form of environmental governance has often been practiced under an adaptive governance scheme, prevailing theoretical and practical difficulties must be solved to enhance policy effectiveness and outcomes. Our objective was to clarify how it is possible to

The economic conservation instrument of payments for ecosystem services (PES) enjoys an increasing popularity among scientists, politicians, and civil society organizations alike, while others raise concerns regarding the ecological effectiveness and social justice of this instrument. In this review article, we showcase the variety of existing PES definitions and systematically locate these definitions