Panarchy theory for convergence

Governance of a landscape: The role of formal and informal organizations

Formal governments alone struggle to effectively manage and navigate undesirable changes in social-ecological systems. Informal governance networks are often seen as essential to address shortcomings of government; however, the roles and influence of these networks are poorly understood. Given the increasing prominence of multiparty processes for environmental governance in the U.S. and beyond, it is critical to understand the shifting roles and influences of both formal and informal organizations in governing large-scale social-ecological systems-specifically regarding social-ecological regime shifts that result in undesirable outcomes. The current conversion of grasslands to woodlands in the U.S. Great Plains biome exemplifies such a social-ecological regime shift. We leverage this ongoing regime shift to better understand the roles of formal and informal organizations in environmental governance networks. Through a social science survey, we measured risk perceptions, organizational learning, organizational influence and social networks among Nebraska and Montana conservation professionals from organizations engaged in grassland governance. We found differences between formal and informal governance organization in risk perceptions and organizational priorities. Additionally, informal organizations demonstrated lower occupational similarity of conservation professionals' social networks. Our results suggest meaningful differences in how formal vs. informal governance organizations are responding to the regime shift and support the hypothesis that informal governance organizations bridge between sectors and enhance the nimbleness of environmental governance during times of social-ecological change. However, low representation of producers within conservation professionals' networks, among other challenges with effective bottom-up environmental governance, illustrate important gaps for effectively governing social-ecological regime shifts.

Moving beyond the panarchy heuristic

Panarchy is a heuristic of complex system change rooted in resilience science. The concept has been rapidly assimilated across scientific disciplines due to its potential to envision and address sustainability challenges, such as climate change and regime shifts, that pose significant challenges for humans in the Anthropocene. However, panarchy has been studied almost exclusively via qualitative research. Quantitative approaches are scarce and preliminary but have revealed novel insights that allow for a more nuanced understanding of the heuristic and resilience science more generally. In this roadmap we discuss the potential for future quantitative approaches to panarchy. Transdisciplinary development of quantitative approaches, combined with advances in data accrual, curation and machine learning, may build on current tools. Combined with qualitative research and traditional approaches used in ecology, quantification of panarchy may allow for broad inference of change in complex systems of people and nature and provide critical information for management of social-ecological systems.

Connecting distinct realms along multiple dimensions: A meta-ecosystem resilience perspective

Resilience research is central to confront the sustainability challenges to ecosystems and human societies in a rapidly changing world. Given that social-ecological problems span the entire Earth system, there is a critical need for resilience models that account for the connectivity across intricately linked ecosystems (i.e., freshwater, marine, terrestrial, atmosphere). We present a resilience perspective of meta-ecosystems that are connected through the flow of biota, matter and energy within and across aquatic and terrestrial realms, and the atmosphere. We demonstrate ecological resilience sensu Holling using aquatic-terrestrial linkages and riparian ecosystems more generally. A discussion of applications in riparian ecology and meta-ecosystem research (e.g., resilience quantification, panarchy, meta-ecosystem boundary delineations, spatial regime migration, including early warning indications) concludes the paper. Understanding meta-ecosystem resilience may have potential to support decision making for natural resource management (scenario planning, risk and vulnerability assessments).