Human Dimensions Of Global Change Research Articles

Developing a Climate Change Vulnerability Index for Coastal City Sustainability, Mitigation, and Adaptation: A Case Study of Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia

Coastal hazards are an urgent issue of global concern considering the increasing population pressure in coastal regions, retreating coastlines, and rising seawater levels. Here we demonstrate the process of assessing the vulnerability of a coastal urban environment using the case of Kuala Terengganu, a coastal town in Malaysia, and evaluating the potential social, environmental, and economic impacts. Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to environmental, climatic, and non-climate impacts on coastal city population growth and communities. We address these uncertainties by combining a Delphi-Analytical Hierarchy Process (Delphi-AHP) model and Geographic Information System (GIS)tools to determine mitigation and adaptation probabilities as part of a Coastal City Vulnerability Assessment. We conclude by presenting calculations of the short- and long-term suitability for land use and recommending hazard mitigation measures to equip city planners and decision-makers in evaluating hazards and potential impacts on coastal city areas.

Remote Sensing of Human–Environment Interactions in Global Change Research: A Review of Advances, Challenges and Future Directions

The role of remote sensing and human–environment interactions (HEI) research in social and environmental decision-making has steadily increased along with numerous technological and methodological advances in the global environmental change field. Given the growing inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of studies focused on understanding the human dimensions of global change (HDGC), the need for a synchronization of agendas is evident. We conduct a bibliometric assessment and review of the last two decades of peer-reviewed literature to ascertain what the trends and current directions of integrating remote sensing into HEI research have been and discuss emerging themes, challenges, and opportunities. Despite advances in applying remote sensing to understanding ever more complex HEI fields such as land use/land cover change and landscape degradation, agricultural dynamics, urban geography and ecology, natural hazards, water resources, epidemiology, or paleo HEIs, challenges remain in acquiring and leveraging accurately georeferenced social data and establishing transferable protocols for data integration. However, recent advances in micro-satellite, unmanned aerial systems (UASs), and sensor technology are opening new avenues of integration of remotely sensed data into HEI research at scales relevant for decision-making purposes that simultaneously catalyze developments in HDGC research. Emerging or underutilized methodologies and technologies such as thermal sensing, digital soil mapping, citizen science, UASs, cloud computing, mobile mapping, or the use of “humans as sensors” will continue to enhance the relevance of HEI research in achieving sustainable development goals and driving the science of HDGC further.

What National Decision‐makers Need From The IPCC: Special Reports With New Insights

AbstractWhat decision‐makers in countries want to know from science is more than just an understanding of what is a good and environmentally aware society, or the human dimensions of global change. They also want to know how to achieve comparable levels of human wellbeing keeping within global ecological limits. In the absence of agreed criteria on who has to do what, global cooperation as well as national action now needs new insights for potential policy choices and these could come from Special Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Characterising rural resilience in Aotearoa-New Zealand: a systematic review

The concept of ‘resilience’ has recently gained traction in a range of contexts. Its various interpretations and framings are now used to examine a variety of issues, particularly relating to the human dimensions of global change. This can pose challenges to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers seeking to develop focused research programmes, design targeted interventions, and communicate across disciplinary boundaries. The concept of resilience is widely used in Aotearoa-New Zealand, where it informs both government policy and research programmes. Resilience is particularly relevant in this small developed nation, which is heavily reliant on primary production in rural areas and affected by a range of geological and climatic hazards. To understand the range and extent of application of resilience in the rural context, we use systematic review methods to identify, characterise, and synthesise this knowledge base. Currently, research applying the concept of resilience in the rural context is limited in areal extent, largely quantitative in nature, and led by a small number of researchers. There is limited evidence of collaboration. Research has focused on a small number of hazards, failing to capture the diversity of risks and hazards in addition to their impacts. The results of our analysis and methodology offer important insights for meta-analyses of risk and hazard scholarship. The findings provide a baseline to track the future progress and effectiveness of resilience interventions and help inform current and future research priorities targeting persistent vulnerabilities in rural New Zealand and elsewhere.

Biosphere-human feedbacks: a physical geography perspective

Biogeography has many connections to people but fewer to human geography. Biogeography is connected to the four dimensions of anthropogenic global change, but most of this research is tied to land-use change. Biogeographers have studied several ways in which land use affects the patterns and dynamics of organisms, mostly in reference to remnants of habitat destruction, but the human dimensions of this relationship are more explicit in changing habitat quality. How biogeography affects land use is also studied, but research on topics such as ecosystem services needs more contributions from geographers. Feedbacks between people and the other organisms with which we live, with more fully linked models, are a general subject in which biogeographers can contribute to progress in the human dimensions of global change.

A Ecologia como parâmetro da Geopolítica -- O legado de Bertha Becker no Campo dos Estudos Ambientais na Amazônia

Traçamos reflexões sobre o legado de Bertha Becker em nossas parcerias noInstituto de Pesquisas Espaciais na institucionalização de programas sobre a Amazônia. O envolvimento de nosso Instituto se iniciava com questões das ciências naturais ou técnicas, mas frequentemente condicionado por questões políticas e programáticas amplas. Bertha com suas ideias que nos deu referências para pensar nossos programas além de domínios de organização mais estritamente técnicos ao levantar questões sobre diferentes opções para introduzir o elemento humano em nosso campo de pesquisas. Ela colocaria em relevo a natureza política da temática das dimensões humanas das mudanças globais, em uma perspectiva que, até hoje, permanece original em nosso campo; ela permitiria dar maior relevância às condições políticas e sociais na própria Amazônia.

A Culture of Neglect: Climate Discourse and Disabled People

A Culture of Neglect: Climate Discourse and Disabled People

Water for Agriculture: Global Change and Geographic Perspectives on Research Challenges for the Future

In writing about the future of humanity on Earth, E. O. Wilson (2002) used the metaphor of a “bottleneck” to characterize the current and forthcoming period of tremendous human demand on planetary resources. The combination of continuing growth in global population, the associated demand for food and fiber, and a relatively fixed water resource base results in a number of grand challenges that will be part of the hydro-social research landscape for the next 20 years (Graedel et al. 2001, Myers et al. 2007, Robertson and Swinton 2005). Complexity of these coupled human-environment problems (Liu et al. 2007) and uncertainty in human understanding and responses to our transition into and through the bottleneck provide many opportunities for scholars to contribute relevant information on our adapting journey toward planetary sustainability (Frieman et al. 1999). Research questions from earth system science, human-environment, and spatial perspectives that address uncertainties regarding future water availability, water quality, and how we will make use of water resources, are needed to help the world community find a way to support our growing planetary population. In the 2001 Envisioning report, the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies of Sciences identified 43 research issues (Table 1) among the three broad categories of water availability, water use, and water institutions, with some issues specific to the agricultural enterprise (Vaux, Jr. et al. 2001). A subsequent National Academies of Sciences assessment, discussing the role of research in addressing national water problems, indicated that research designs “should explicitly reflect the four themes of interdisciplinarity, broad systems context, uncertainty, and adaptation” (Vaux, Jr. et al. 2004: 6). Recognizing that humans are greatly modifying the global water system the Global Environmental Change Programmes established an international effort that 1) informs policy but is driven by science, 2) is global in scope, 3) is interdisciplinary and integrative, and 4) addresses multiple time scales (Vorosmarty et al. 2004). The three framing questions regarding the global water system address the relative size of both anthropogenic and environmental changes, linkages and feedbacks that materialize due to changes in the global water system, and resilience and adaptability of management strategies. An ecosystem services approach to address fresh water resource issues provided a perspective for suggesting twelve priorities for updating water policies for the 21st Century (Postel 2005). In addition, Wilbanks and Kates (1998) have indicated that investigation of the local expressions of global change is a key contribution that geographers can make. This paper provides an articulation of research priorities that address water and agriculture for the next two decades, based primarily on a perspective that is informed by aspects of human dimensions of global change and geographic thought.

Andes mountains and human dimensions of global change, an overview

As the international community is gearing towards shifting values andattitudes making adjustments in trending environmental protectioncampaigns, the accepted paradigm points towards the need to minimize theimpacts on mountain landscapes subjected to climate change due to globalwarming. Hitherto, research policy and the subsequent funding for proposalsdealing with climate change have emphasized the physical dimension,mainly on the cryosphere with glacial retreat and glacier ablation, and on thehydrosphere with lack or rain-fed snow, erratic precipitation, diminishingwater bodies and minimized aquifers. It is just recently, however, that thehuman dimension has been incorporated as a major pillar for ourunderstanding of landscape change and the recent emphasis for fundedresearch.In the tropical mountain areas of the Americas, this social sciencesapproach to study climate change is particularly important, because of theancient imprint on the land has often taken as an anecdotal outcome of sorts,whereby the use of different strategies, Andean communities have copedwith changes in the land for many reasons, including climate change. Theneoliberal policies that facilitated the opening of free market economies intoonce isolated mountain systems are been tested in scenarios of poverty,marginality and neglect. Andean communities are facing major changes, notonly due to global climate change, but particularly because of the impact ofglobalization in their ways of life. Entire livelihoods are threatened with the

Tourism in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) is a transboundary protected area that straddles the borders of Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The park's development was partly motivated by the ecological objective of re-establishing traditional migratory wildlife routes once fences between the three countries are dismantled. Besides biodiversity conservation benefits, the park may also provide a basis to generate revenue for conservation and local economic development through tourism. This paper describes current state and private sector tourism within the GLTP and planning initiatives that may promote responsible tourism, and describes the achievements by community-based tourism enterprises and public–private partnerships in generating economic, social and environmental benefits. The livelihoods of people living in the park are outlined in relation to government policies on land redistribution, resettlement and options for the future, and progress in biodiversity conservation and responsible nature-based tourism development within the GLTP over the past five years is evaluated. 1Research Fellow, Transboundary Protected Areas Research Initiative, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. This research was supported by the BMW Chair for Sustainability, University of the Witwatersrand and the Transboundary Protected Areas Research Initiative (TPARI), an IUCN-SA programme funded through the Centre for the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Carnegie Mellon University, by way of a co-operative agreement with the National Science Foundation (SBR-9521914). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendation expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or Carnegie Mellon. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who commented on a draft of this paper. This paper is largely drawn from Spenceley (2005); the full paper is available at http://www.anna.spenceley.co.uk/files/Tourism%20InvestmentGLTFCAMar05.pdf

Impact assessments and policy responses to sea-level rise in three US states: An exploration of human-dimension uncertainties

Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise (SLR). This paper explores the uncertainties in the assessment process and in state-level policy and management responses of three US states to SLR. The findings reveal important political, economic, managerial, and social factors that enable or constrain SLR responses; question disasters as policy windows; and uncover new policy opportunities in the history of state coastal policies. Results suggest that a more realistic, and maybe more useful picture of climate change impacts will emerge if assessments take more seriously the locally embedded realities and constraints that affect individual decision-makers’ and communal responses to climate change.

Cultural ecology: placing households in human-environment studies - the cases of tropical forest transitions and agrobiodiversity change

Cultural ecology is today at a place of rapidly expanding interconnections with the growing number of human-environment approaches in geography and other fields. Productive interconnections are evidenced, for example, in the extensive debate and discussion within geography that surround the varied relations (e.g., theory, methods, roles of science and representation, scale and subject matter) of cultural ecology to political ecology, since the latter is regarded as a chief cognate approach. Sufficient similarities evident in that dialogue led to the renaming of the specialty group within the Association of American Geographers as Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE). This broadly based cultural ecology is currently counted as one of the most active and popular of the specialty groups within the organization, and it is the largest of the groups that are focused on human-environment interaction. Reaching this position has occurred though a process of incremental growth over the course of the period since 1960 in a range of distinct subfields, such as cultural-historical ecology, human ecology, systems ecology and adaptive-dynamics ecology. Cultural ecology thus conveys the sense of an umbrella approach, which continues to serve as the integrator for a considerable variety of subfields. While broad in scope, the approach of cultural ecology is also sharing new interconnections with the expanding suite of other human-environment approaches. For example, the ‘human dimensions of global change’ appears to share a defining emphasis on the interaction of global environmental processes with local actors and institutions that is common to much of cultural ecology. The interconnections of cultural ecology with political ecology and with ‘human dimensions’ is typically dialogic, often to a high degree, in that most studies associated with one field are actively informed by and engaged with the others. This dialogic tendency in cultural ecology is found also in relation to various other distinctly framed approaches toward human-environment interaction (in geography as well as anthropology, sociology and environmental studies). Several intersecting points

Making Climate HOT

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsLisa DillingSusanne C. Moser is a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Change's Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (ISSE) in Boulder, CO. She is a geographer by training, and her research foci for the last 10 years have been the human dimensions of global change. Her current research interests include effective climate change communication and social change, interactions between scientists and stakeholders (in particular, decisionmakers), coastal impacts of climate change and effective adaptation strategies, and health impacts of climate change. During a post-doctorate at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in the Global Environment Assessment project, Moser became particularly interested in the science-policy interaction. She also worked for the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, DC, on a congressionally mandated project on coastal erosion and management. From 1999–2003, Moser was staff scientist for climate change for the Union of Concerned Scientists, managing projects on climate change impacts and working in the trenches of effective climate change communication and social mobilization for change. She may be reached at smoser@ucar.edu.Lisa Dilling is a visiting fellow with the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder. Her current research focuses on the use of science-generated carbon-cycle information in policy and decisionmaking. More generally, she is interested in the intersection between science and policy, especially topics such as the scales of information needed and used, the institutional barriers to better use of information, and the decisionmaking process used to set priorities for research to serve societal needs. Dilling previously worked as a program manager for a national carbon-cycle science program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where she studied the oceanic carbon cycle. She recently contributed an article related to her research to the Annual Review of Environmental Resources. She may be contacted via phone at (303) 735-3678 or via e-mail at ldilling@circs.colorado.edu. The authors thank Robert Kates for inviting them to write this article. He and the other editors of Environment provided very helpful feedback on an earlier draft. In addition, the authors received valuable feedback from Robert Harriss, Nancy Cole, Aaron McCright, Susan Watrous, and Anthony Leiserowitz. More fundamentally, this article draws on the thoughtful discussions that took place in June 2004 at a workshop in Boulder, CO (see http://www.isse.ucar.edu/changeworkshop/index.html). The authors are deeply indebted to all participants for their expertise, wisdom, and inspiration. They will add depth to the ideas presented here in a forthcoming anthology on climate change communication and social change (edited by the authors). The authors gratefully acknowledge funding for the project from The MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Walter Orr Roberts Institute and Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (formerly known as the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group). The opinions expressed herein, and any persistent faults, remain the authors own.

Reflections on a Discipline-wide Project: Developing active learning modules on the human dimensions of global change

Developing Active Learning Modules on the Human Dimensions of Global Change was a four-year discipline-wide project that aimed to infuse current scholarship on global change into introductory and intermediate university courses, develop active learning materials on the human dimensions of global change for use in introductory and intermediate college courses, motivate faculty to think critically about their approaches to teaching and learning, and, finally, establish a process within the Association of American Geographers to develop and disseminate active learning materials. The authors describe the project and reflect on lessons learned.

Land use/cover change in central Tibet, c. 1830–1990: devising a GIS methodology to study a historical Tibetan land decree

In this study, historical Tibetan tax‐related data pertaining to cultivated land in central Tibet are studied by means of GIS and compared with contemporary patterns. A Tibetan land decree from 1830 contains aggregated data on the amount of land‐based tax units for estates in 57 districts of central Tibet. The purpose of this study is to devise a GIS methodology to study the potential utility of these data for historical geographical research, and to determine the approximate changes in cultivated land areas between 1830 and 1990. Traditional Tibetan tax data are significant for current efforts to construct historical land cover databases of the Tibetan Plateau region for the study of the human dimensions of global change.

Climate Change and a Global City Learning from New York

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsCynthia RosenzweigCynthia Rosenzweig is research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she is leader of the Climate Impacts Group. She is adjunct senior research scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute and adjunct professor of environmental science at Barnard College. Her research focuses on the potential impacts of environmental change, including increasing carbon dioxide, global warming, and Ei Niño, on regional, national, and global scales. She is lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II Third Assessment Report. She can be contacted at crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov.William D. SoleckiWilliam D. Solecki is associate professor of geography at Montclair State University. Solecki's research focuses on the human dimensions of global environmental change, land use and land cover change, and environmental risks and hazards. He is a panel member of the Committee on Population and Land Use of the U.S. National Research Council. He also is chair of the Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. He can be contacted at soleckiw@mail.montclair.edu.

The concept of scale and the human dimensions of global change: a survey

Issues related to the scale of ecological phenomena are of fundamental importance to their study. The causes and consequences of environmental change can, of course, be measured at different levels and along multiple scales. While the natural sciences have long understood the importance of scale, research regarding scale in the social sciences has been less explicit, less precise, and more variable. The growing need for interdisciplinary work across the natural/social science divide, however, demands that each achieve some common understandings about scaling issues. This survey seeks to facilitate the dialogue between natural and social scientists by reviewing some of the more important aspects of the concept of scale employed in the social sciences, especially as they relate to the human dimensions of global environmental change. The survey presents the fundamentals of scale, examines four general scaling issues typical of social science, and explores how different social science disciplines have used scale in their research.

Research and communication in the “invisible college” of the Human Dimensions of Global Change

The human dimensions of global change research community includes scholars in the natural and social sciences working in universities and government laboratories who share common interests and who communicate with each other through journals, workshops, and conferences and via the Internet. Information and communication technologies, in particular, e-mail, listservs, and the WWW, where speed and low cost are key features, from the backbone of an “electronic invisible college”. The results of a survey of scientists attending the Laxenburg conference in 1997 illustrates the transdisciplinary and international nature of HDGC research, the local and international scale of research, their commitment to public policy, and their increased use of the Internet for networking, data acquisition and analysis, and publication.

Thinking Critically about Global Environmental Issues

Emphasizing global environmental issues in classes presents students with powerful, comparative perspectives on controversial issues. Yet, students cannot make critical judgments without first understanding the structure of critical reasoning. The logic of argument forms used to make critical judgments is a necessary tool that may be conveyed through an interactive classroom activity, drawing on discipline-specific examples that reinforce the content of a course. Two argument forms—convergent reasoning and inference to the best explanation-are described, with instructions for an interactive activity. Examples are drawn from issues of industrial ecology and the human dimensions of global change.

Microcosmic Histories: Island Perspectives on "Global" Change

The Pacific Islands, particularly the Polynesian islands, provide excellent model systems for understanding the human dimensions of global change. This is due to their uniquely microcosmic aspect. Little worlds unto themselves, islands are natural history's best shot at something approaching the controlled experiment. The human choices that have led to particular outcomes on these islands teach us that nothing is inevitable or predetermined. The more we understand how our predecessors fashioned the earth we have inherited, the better we may be able to achieve a "sustainable" relationship with our planet, our own little microcosm within the cosmos.