Abstract
Resource-use decisions affect the ecological and human components of the coupled human and natural system (CHANS), but a critique of some frameworks is that they do not address the complexity and tradeoffs within and between the two systems. Land system architecture (LA) was suggested to account for these tradeoffs at multiple levels/scales. LA and landscape ecology (LE) focus on landscape structure (i.e., composition and configuration of land-use and land-cover change [LULCC]) and the processes (social-ecological) resulting from and shaping LULCC. Drawing on mixed-methods research in the Southern Great Plains, we develop a framework that incorporates LA, LE, and governance theory. Public land and water are commons resources threatened by overuse, degradation, and climate change. Resource use is exacerbated by public land and water policies at the state- and local-levels. Our framework provides a foundation for investigating the mechanisms of land systems science (LSS) couplings across multiple levels/scales to understand how and why governance impacts human LULCC decisions (LA) and how those LULCC patterns influence, and are influenced by, the underlying ecological processes (LE). This framework provides a mechanism for investigating the feedbacks between and among the different system components in a CHANS that subsequently impact future human design decisions.
Highlights
More than 75% of the Earth’s ice-free surface shows significant evidence of human-induced alterations [1], most commonly in the form of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), with agriculture being a major driver of that change [2]
The landscape metric results provide a simple and efficient measure of woody vegetation pattern changes across the landscape, but alone they do not provide an indication of the likelihood of land transitioning from grassland to shrubland during the study period in the different land tenure regimes
By integrating the human design aspects central to land systems architecture with the already-coupled, multi-scalar relationships between landscape patterns and processes central to landscape ecology, we expand upon previous work integrating Land system architecture (LA) and LE, both directly and indirectly [23,25,26,34,37]
Summary
More than 75% of the Earth’s ice-free surface shows significant evidence of human-induced alterations [1], most commonly in the form of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), with agriculture being a major driver of that change [2]. The term Sustainability Science [22] has emerged alongside LCS and LSS to incorporate environmental services, human designed land systems architecture [23], and other natural resources, such as water [1] These interconnected fields often emphasize “big question”, multidisciplinary problem solving related to issues surrounding sustainability, adaptation, and global environmental change [5,24,25], while emphasizing CHANS in terms of patterns, processes, and prediction [12]. By integrating human design aspects that are central to landlandscape systems architecture ecological processes that are central to landscape ecology, we establish a comprehensive framework already-coupled, multi-level/multi-scalar relationships between landscape patterns and social and for investigating the complexity in CHANS. Forwhile tradeoffs within and accounting between thefor human and environmental subsystem at and multiple levels/scales, This framework provides a foundation for investigating the mechanisms of these couplings, while simultaneously accounting for the coupling of environmental patterns and ecological to understand and whyprovides governance human decisions (LA).
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