Abstract
Abstract Understanding the complex interlinkages between humans and nature is crucial for developing strategies to effectively manage natural resources and to enhance resilience of social–ecological systems (SES). Network analysis bears great potential to advance such comprehension of SESs because it allows for identifying and analysing direct and indirect relationships and processes. As a result, the number of network studies in social–ecological research has rapidly grown over the last decade. This work systematizes existing network approaches for analysing human–nature relationships based on the level of integration of both the social and ecological realms in the network conceptualization. A structured inductive review of existing empirical network studies exploring a wide range of phenomena at the human–nature interface was conducted, resulting in 138 studies falling into three proposed categories. We examine their network conceptualization and means of analysis, and discuss challenges and potentials of each of the three categories in empirical research. The study highlights the diversity and creativity with which distinct social and ecological entities are defined to enable the use of a variety of network analytical approaches in SES research. Demonstrating the increasing recognition of network analysis to describe human–nature relationships since the early 2000s and providing an overview of the many useful conceptual and methodological approaches, this article contributes to systematizing the existing studies and provides practical guidance for network research to help disentangling complex SES. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Highlights
Human activities and environmental change alter ecological systems (Halpern et al, 2008; Kappel, 2005), often with unpredictable consequences for delivering ecosystem services essential to societal well-being and development world-wide (MEA, 2005; Rockström et al, 2009)
The study highlights the diversity and creativity with which distinct social and ecological entities are defined to enable the use of a variety of network analytical approaches in SES research
In an increasingly interconnected world, the understanding of direct and indirect linkages at the human–nature interface in SES is crucial for designing long-term management strategies to maintain important system functioning
Summary
Human activities and environmental change alter ecological systems (Halpern et al, 2008; Kappel, 2005), often with unpredictable consequences for delivering ecosystem services essential to societal well-being and development world-wide (MEA, 2005; Rockström et al, 2009). The dynamic processes in the ecological and social (sub-)systems and their interlinkages produce outcomes at the larger SES level, which, in turn, influence and change the subsystems and their components (Brondizio, Ostrom, & Young, 2009; Ostrom, 2009). This is why understanding these complex interdependencies in SESs is critical to developing effective strategies for steering towards more sustainable and resilient human–nature relationships (Bodin, Robins, et al, 2016; Yletyinen, Hentati-Sundberg, Blenckner, & Bodin, 2018)
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