TY - JOUR
T1 - Complex land systems
T2 - The need for long time perspectives to assess their future
AU - Dearing, John A.
AU - Braimoh, Ademola K.
AU - Reenberg, Anette
AU - Turner, Billie
AU - Van Der Leeuw, Sander
PY - 2010/12
Y1 - 2010/12
N2 - The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses on how well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexity framework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporal perspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionary approaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionary assessments provide insight into site-specific system properties. Four dimensions of these properties: (1) trends and trajectories, (2) frequencies, thresholds and alternate steady states, (3) slow and fast processes, and (4) legacies and contingencies, are discussed. Compilations and analyses of past information and data from instruments and observations, palaeoenvironmental archives, and human and environmental history are now the subject of major international effort. The embedding of empirical information over multidecadal timescales in attempts to define and model sustainable and adaptive management of land systems is now not only possible, but also necessary.
AB - The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses on how well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexity framework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporal perspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionary approaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionary assessments provide insight into site-specific system properties. Four dimensions of these properties: (1) trends and trajectories, (2) frequencies, thresholds and alternate steady states, (3) slow and fast processes, and (4) legacies and contingencies, are discussed. Compilations and analyses of past information and data from instruments and observations, palaeoenvironmental archives, and human and environmental history are now the subject of major international effort. The embedding of empirical information over multidecadal timescales in attempts to define and model sustainable and adaptive management of land systems is now not only possible, but also necessary.
KW - Adaptation
KW - Complex systems
KW - Global Land Project
KW - Land systems
KW - Multidecadal timescales
KW - Resilience
KW - Socioecological systems
KW - Sustainability science
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78651476331&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=78651476331&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5751/ES-03645-150421
DO - 10.5751/ES-03645-150421
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78651476331
VL - 15
JO - Conservation Ecology
JF - Conservation Ecology
SN - 1708-3087
IS - 4
ER -