Aquaculture has been responsible for an impressive growth in the global supply of seafood. As of 2016, more than half of all global seafood production comes from aquaculture. To meet future global seafood demands, there is need and opportunity to exp...
This paper reviews the exploration and application of social–ecological systems research perspectives to sustainable development issues such as the areas of coupled human–earth relations, resource management, geographical landscape patter...
In a global landscape characterized by interconnected risks and the deepening of digital transformation, understanding the impact and mechanisms of artificial intelligence on social–ecological resilience is crucial for advancing resilience gove...
Social-ecological system theory draws upon concepts established within the discipline of ecology, and applies them to a more holistic view of a human-in-nature system. We incorporated the keystone concept into social-ecological system theory, and use...
The social–ecological nexus (SEN) offers a framework to capture the complex and dynamic interactions and interdependencies between human communities and the natural systems that support them. This study analyzed the SENs within a village tank c...
Bioeconomy strategies in high income societies focus at replacing finite, fossil resources by renewable, biological resources to reconcile macro-economic concerns with climate constraints. However, the current bioeconomy is associated with critical l...
Resilience thinking has strongly influenced how people understand and pursue sustainability of linked social-ecological systems. Resilience thinking highlights the need to build capacity and manage general system properties in a complex, constantly c...
Understanding the adaptive dynamics of social-ecological systems (SESs) is critical for regional sustainability as human–environment interactions intensify. However, existing indicator-based research frequently lacks a clear theoretical framewo...
Small plateau lake basins are sensitive social–ecological systems in which ecological protection, rural development, and institutional governance are closely intertwined. Therefore, fine-scale resilience assessment is needed to support adaptive...
The study addresses health-associated risks and health indicators required for the framing of Social-Ecological System Health (SESH) in aquaculture food-producing systems. The advantages of using a healthy Social-Ecological System (SES) are highlight...
Specialty agriculture, promoted in China to enhance rural revitalization and farmers’ wellbeing, depends heavily on local social–ecological conditions and land transformations. However, existing studies often emphasize socio-institutional...
Energy is the main driver of human Social-Ecological System (SES) dynamics. Collective energy properties of human SES can be described applying the principles of statistical mechanics: (i) energy consumption repartition; (ii) efficiency; (iii) perfor...
Karst ecosystems have become complex social–ecological systems (SESs) as a result of the interventions of large-scale ecological restoration programs, and the ecosystem services (ESs) that provide regional well-being can, to some extent, be des...
Understanding the regime shifts of Social–Ecological Systems (SES) and their local effects and driving factors over a long period of time is significant for future sustainability. We provide a perspective on the processes unfolding over time in...
17 July 2022
The mine–agriculture–urban compound area formed under the combined effects of natural conditions, mineral resource endowments, and historical development is affected by severe man-made disturbances, and faces a prominent contradiction bet...
Improving household livelihoods through tourism, while at the same time achieving the goals of conservation, remains a challenge in high-value nature areas around the world. This paper studies a herder-community-based tourism system in Mongolia in li...
Social–ecological system (SES) modeling involves developing and/or applying models to investigate complex problems arising from the interactions between humans and natural systems. Among the different types, agent-based models (ABM) and system...
The adaptive cycle and panarchy are recognised tools for resilience assessment prior to establishing new management approaches aligned with Anthropocene needs. This study used the adaptive cycle and panarchy to assess the dynamics of the social-ecolo...
18 February 2020
Sustainably achieving the goal of global food security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The current food system is failing to meet the needs of people, and at the same time, is having far-reaching impacts on the environment and...
A social–ecological system is a highly connected organization of biophysical and social actors that interact across multiple scales, share resources, and adapt to the actors’ changes. The ways in which humans and nature interact have trad...
20 September 2022
Background: This study aims to identify the status of successful aging and the factors influencing empty-nest elderly in China based on the social-ecological system theory. Methods: The data came from the follow-up survey (2018) of the China Health a...
4 March 2021
Wetlands are unique ecosystems formed by the interaction between land and water on Earth. Poyang Lake, which is a part of China’s largest freshwater lake wetland, is well known for its ecological and economic importance. This study uses a social-ecol...
Recognition of multiple knowledge systems is essential to facilitate collaboration and mutual learning between different actors, integration across social and ecological systems, and sustainable development goals. This study aims to identify how loca...
Managing social–ecological systems that benefit both humans and nature is the central challenge of natural resource management. Integrating multiple perspectives into decision-making adds flexibility to social–ecological systems by reduci...
Urban shrinkage has evolved from a localized phenomenon into a systemic challenge within China’s rapid urbanization, rendering traditional growth-oriented planning paradigms increasingly obsolete. However, existing research often treats shrinka...
In this paper, we frame the problem of urban water sustainability in megacities as a social-ecological system (SES) to examine the underlying coupling of social and ecological factors and processes. Based on our empirical research of two major megaci...
To date, the land–water–food nexus has been primarily addressed from an ecological, hydrological or agronomic angle, with limited response to the governance interface between the input resources. Likewise, in widely used heuristic frameworks, such as...
With the rapid development of global tourism, identifying the vulnerability of tourism-based social-ecological systems (SESs) has become an important topic in sustainable development research. This study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the vulnerabi...
There is increasing interest in using “real-world pedagogy” to train students in ways that make them better able to contribute toward a more sustainable society. While there is a robust body of literature on the competencies that students...
During the 1992 Rio Conference, the sustainable development agenda envisioned a transformative change for the management of natural resources, where the well-being of human society would be enhanced through the sustainable use of natural capital. Sev...
Integration and monitoring are pressing conceptual and methodological challenges in social-ecological systems (SES) research. This paper follows a social learning process, called participatory self-observation, piloted by a group of action-researcher...
In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of shock and conflict in social-ecological systems and investigate the implications of this perspective for the understanding of environmental governance, particularly its evolutionary patterns a...
Against the backdrop of industrialization, urbanization, and the increasingly urgent issue of climate change, the latest round of collective forest tenure reform in China demonstrates the characteristics of institutional change and capital-biased tec...
The spatial association between rural cultural landscape quality (CLQ) and social-ecological system resilience (SESR) influences the pathways and effectiveness of integrating heritage conservation with rural revitalization. Drawing on a sample of 133...
Biosphere reserves aim to reconciliate social and economic development with biodiversity conservation through complex spatial and governance arrangements. However, there is a generalized lack of information about how biosphere reserves are being mana...
Mountain Social–Ecological Systems (MtSES) are global assets, providing essential ecosystem services to nearly half of humanity, yet they are disproportionately vulnerable to global change, experiencing “polytraps” of depopulation,...
The significant energy demands of wine production pose both a challenge and an opportunity for adopting a low-carbon, more sustainable and potentially less expensive energy model. Nevertheless, the (dis)incentives for the wider adoption of local prod...
Urban community gardens are spaces where human well-being is improved by generating ecosystem services locally, and the interactions between humans and the environment increase the resilience of social–ecological systems. Their advantages local...
Small-scale island communities whose livelihoods depend on aquaculture are increasingly vulnerable under interacting climatic and non-climatic stressors. Conventional indicator-based assessments are useful for describing the level of vulnerability, b...
The Anthropocene is characterized by rapid global change, necessitating adaptive governance. But how can such adaptive governance be operationalized? The article offers a three-point argument to approach this question. First, people and environment n...
In this study, we examined the extent to which global warming management is currently integrated into the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), the central legal framework for water management in the EU. We focused on the Elbe River Basin Distric...
The concept of resilience has greatly contributed to the scientific discussion on human–nature interactions by analysing the dynamics, relationships and feedbacks between society and the natural environment at different levels. In this paper, w...
Adaptive governance is increasingly considered a feasible approach to address the uncertainties and complexities of social-ecological system (SES), whereas its role on SES coupling has not been sufficiently testified. Empirical evidence is provided i...
The rural transformation driven by regime shift is obvious around the world, and there is still insufficient research exploring related effective analytical frameworks and ideas. Transformation adaptation is widely used in the field of disaster resea...
The purpose of this synthesis paper is to present the motivations and conceptual basis for research on socio-technical-ecological systems (STES), addressing the need for interdisciplinary studies targeting the technological mediation of human–e...
Carbon emissions have a profound impact on the transformation goals and development paths of cities. In the context of carbon neutrality, it is of great significance to explore the coupling coordination level of the social–ecological systems in...
Riverscapes are coupled social-ecological systems (SESs), in which the differences between the scales and functioning of interacting social and ecological components ( “mismatch”) impose challenges for global arid basin sustainability. He...
This paper argues that if the goal of slowing global ecological degradation, and of sustained improvement in aquatic ecosystem health is to be achieved, then a departure is required from the traditional, discipline-focused approach to aquatic ecosyst...
The conflict between individual rationality and collective rationality, as revealed by the tragedy of the commons, constitutes the core dilemma of collective action in ecological and environmental governance. The key to resolving this dilemma lies in...
The aim of this article is to present the social–ecological system (SES) as a unit of analysis for sustainable water management under conditions of anthropogenic pressure in Poland. In the face of accelerating climate change and growing human i...
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