The role of universities in developing interdisciplinary action research collaborations to understand and manage resilient social-ecological systems

Abstract

Abstract Sustainable development activities are comprised of complex sets of social, economic, and ecological factors. Cross-scale knowledge and applications are increasingly valuable today in achieving successful interdisciplinary action research collaborations among universities and other stakeholders in order to understand and manage the predictable and unpredictable transformative change possibilities in social-ecological systems. This paper analyzes case studies of two complex regional social-ecological systems that illustrate the dynamic interactions between human societies and natural systems. The framework of panarchy, which integrates the cross-scales and domains of social, economic, and environmental systems, is incorporated as a means of examining the dimensions of adaptability and resilience, and the evolution of these social-ecological systems as stakeholder learning networks. The practical intent of using case studies is threefold: 1. To demonstrate how a holistic synthesis of these multi-domain frameworks can enrich descriptive and prescriptive analyses of social-ecological systems phenomena, 2. To make these integrative frameworks and analytical tools more readily useful for students, university educators, researchers and academic-practitioners, to incorporate into interdisciplinary curricula, teaching, research and practice, and 3. To offer these cross-domain tools to facilitate integrative action research collaborative partnerships among educators, researchers, academic-practitioners, and other social-ecological system stakeholders.