Multi-year landscape-scale efficacy analysis of fluridone treatment of invasive submerged aquatic vegetation in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta

Invasive aquatic macrophytes are a major threat to estuarine ecosystems globally, posing difficult control challenges for resource managers. This study examined the efficacy of a fluridone treatment program to control invasive submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). We leveraged four datasets to examine efficacy of fluridone treatment in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, a freshwater tidal estuary in California, from 2014 to 2018. Annual SAV coverage maps derived from spectroscopy data were used in conjunction with fluridone application data and water current speed predicted by a 3-D hydrodynamic model of the study system. Our objective was to determine if the probability of SAV occurrence in treated sites was significantly different from untreated sites. We examined whether efficacy was influenced by the amount of herbicide applied at a site, the local current speed, and the treatment history of the site. We found that treatment efficacy was positively associated with the amount of herbicide applied per unit area, but this effect was mediated by a negative association with current speed. The efficacy of treatment did not improve when a site was treated for multiple consecutive years. Finally, we did not detect legacy effects one year after cessation of treatment. Our results suggest the need for careful selection of treatment sites to ensure that the amount of fluridone applied is likely to have significant impact given local current speeds. Our study underscores the need for development of additional treatment methodologies for hydrologically dynamic systems such as estuaries, particularly when control is needed year-round and for multiple years.

Situating social work within disaster governance. Assessing the agency of social work as a bridging agent and its professionalization in disaster governance

The SARS-COV-2 pandemic created a serious shock and surprise to the disaster governance mechanisms in existence. Even the most advanced disaster governance systems in the world struggled to govern, respond, communicate risk and build resilience against the pandemic. The overall management – locally and globally- showed that relevant stakeholders such as social workers that work frontline but also within disaster management relevant fields, were not heart nor taken their potentials and knowledge into consideration to sustainably set up a disaster management and responds strategy. Applying a comparative multi-sited ethnographic approach, the study aims to highlight the potential agency of social work as a bridging agent to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of existing disaster governance and communication architecture and improve the resilience of communities to cope with the socio-ecological complexity of future disasters, similar to SARS-COV-2. Impact will be created in four main areas: (1) Actors in disaster governance will be educated using the new knowledge produced on contextualized disaster governance and communication strategies and impacts on community resilience; (2) Enhanced capacity and awareness of professional social work practitioners on their role/s as bridging agents within the disaster governance architecture to enhance disaster risk communication and community resilience; (3) Improved capacity for decision and policy-making and strengthened agency of social work in the field of disaster governance through the introduction of professional development training and the ToolKit SW2BRIDGE; and (4) Improved social work education at the university level through the introduction of a post-graduate programme on the application of social work in disasters.

Operational Resilience as a Key Determinant of Corporate Sustainable Longevity in the Indonesian Jamu Industry

The jamu (Indonesian traditional herbal drink) industry has grown in popularity because of people’s increased interest in the qualities of herbal remedies for bodily immunity. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected not only the market but also how businesses have managed their supply chains and production. COVID-19 has been claimed to be a test of a company’s long-term viability. Sustainability refers to a company’s ability to last a long time (corporate longevity). The tug of war between economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social justice that guarantees enterprises are profitable and sustainable is the main issue for companies in developing governance. From a theoretical standpoint, longevity is an intriguing problem. There are two types of corporate longevity: corporate longevity (CL) and corporate sustainable longevity (CSL). Little research has specifically examined the internal aspects of CSL. It necessitates several specific characteristics that all play a role in CSL. This research intends to highlight operational resilience as a crucial predictor of CSL’s significance in the jamu business. Companies that have consistently produced and benefitted from their business operations, before, during, and after the pandemic, have faced challenges of sustainability or longevity. Predecessor independent variables, and moderating or mediating variables, can be used to enable the operational resilience stance. To achieve CSL, the company must know how much it will determine its position in numerous ways in company practice. This study contributes to exploring dimensions and indicators of operational resilience to determine CSL in its relevance to the jamu industry. Different roles for operational resilience in different industry practices are also feasible.

Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction by Building a Robust Social-Emotional Preparedness Program

Despite the progress made in understanding the characteristics of earthquakes, the predictions of earthquake activity are still inevitably very uncertain, mainly because of the highly complex nature of the earthquake process. The population′s mental strength is of high importance not only to cope with an earthquake, but also to return quickly to functioning. Social-emotional preparedness for extreme adverse events and crises is a critical factor in the population’s quick recovery and return to full functioning. In the present study, we apply a multi-disciplinary lens to extend the scope of earthquake preparedness to include social-emotional programs. The goal of this study is to develop a robust “no-regret” social-emotional preparedness program (SEPP) along with methodological tools for evaluating the SEPP robustness against uncertainty in different earthquake scenarios. The research methodology is twofold. First, we develop the SEPP based on social-emotional proxies-for-robustness, and second, we apply the info-gap decision theory (IGDT) methods to assess the robustness of the SEPP in the face of uncertainty in different earthquake scenarios. The findings indicate gaps between the level of robustness of the SEPP in different scenarios. A key conclusion that emerges from this study is the need for a robust SEPP to make a significant contribution to the population’s ability to return to functioning. Such SEPP should be formulated to maximize the robustness against uncertainty in different scenarios, rather than the traditional planning based on a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Formulating a robust SEPP by analyzing the robustness of the SEPP against uncertainty will enable to make decisions immune to surprises. Ways to create or improve earthquake preparedness are suggested for policy and in-school application.

Resilient Health and the Healthcare System. A Few Introductory Remarks in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

People across the globe are facing increasingly complex public health emergencies that are responsible for the loss of life, economic and social problems with unprecedented damage and costs. For some sociologists, our society is even “a risk society” and our time is highly violative. Emergencies of different origin: stemming from natural environmental disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, intense drought, technical accidents, social unrest and last but not least—outbreaks of infectious diseases. This decade started with one of the most significant pandemics in the history of man-kind—COVID-19. Hence, the problems of resilient health and healthcare systems have become urgent. Especially since SARS-CoV-2 may cause long-term health threats and recurrent crises. It is very important to have a common language. So far, definitions and concepts of health and healthcare resilience differ substantially and are seldom clearly defined. The aim of this paper is to describe how health and healthcare system resilience is defined to either uncover, recall, or in combination, its concept and prepare an introductory conceptual review as a preliminary step for further studies.

Factors affecting the spatial resilience of Ethiopia's secondary cities to urban uncertainties: A study of household perceptions of Kombolcha city

The resilience measurement focuses on urban shocks and stresses, which are excluded from current spatial resilience assessments. As a result, existing literature suggests that research in secondary cities of the global south is needed to understand better spatial resilience in the face of multivariate, intersecting, and uncertain challenges. This study aims to determine the factors affecting the spatial resilience of Ethiopia's secondary cities to urban uncertainties using household perceptions of Kombolcha city. The study collected empirical data through questionnaires and key informant interviews, and then analyzed those using SPSS and the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Accordingly, seventeen environmental and physical urban problems affecting the spatial resilience of the country's secondary cities were identified. Deforestation, surface flooding, landslides, poor solid waste management, and inadequate drainage facilities were perceived as top priority urban problems in Kombolcha city with the respective values of 19.73%, 13.02%, 12.70%, 7.59%, and 6.82% of the four hundred sampled households. However, water scarcity and wind-related shocks, scoring 1.48% and 1.89%, respectively, were the least recurring urban problems. The city's spatial resilience is further limited by unsustainable material and resource consumption, a lack of infrastructure, poor transportation system conditions, poor implementation of response measures: lack of appropriate planning, and non-long-lasting biophysical measures. The household perception also showed that the urban uncertainties are severe in the city, with a 49.48% response rate. The findings also revealed a relationship and commonalities amongst the problems exacerbated by land-use zoning changes and the thriving informal settlements. The study implied that improving secondary cities' coping, adaptation, and governance systems are critical for mitigating the perceived urban problems and making cities spatially resilient. Thus, the study's spatial planning implications are that local governments in secondary cities commit to localizing international initiatives, strictly establishing and enforcing local resource utilization strategies, and improving living conditions in their cities.

Social-ecological system resilience of debris flow alluvial fans in the Awang basin, China

Debris flow alluvial fans (DFAFs) are vulnerable, although they can be used as a natural resource. The relationships between different factors related to DFAF systems and between these factors and systems are important both for identifying the risks and opportunities presented by DFAFs and for tracking system status. In this regard, resilience may be used to characterize the status of a DFAF. This study aimed to explore the processes and mechanisms of interactions among the social, economic, and ecological factors related to DFAF with respect to resilience, and to discuss potential problems in a representative DFAF. Based on the site condition and characteristics of the Awang DFAF (China) in the period 1996-2017, we formed a comprehensive indicator evaluation framework by analyzing disturbance, function, and feedback. We also established a model for evaluating resilience by integrating the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) - an entropy evaluation method (EEM) and set pair analysis (SPA). The results showed that the system of the studied DFAF was dynamically stable. The domination of the ecological system was subsequently superseded by social and economic resilience. While disturbance had direct and immediate effects, coping ability was cumulative and characterized by hysteresis at a particular response time. Overall, resilience fluctuated within an acceptable range rather than linearly increasing or decreasing. This analysis illuminated the dynamic processes of DFAFs and contributed to the understanding and planning of system trade-offs and degraded-land utilization.

Resilience of the pastoral component of Moroccan small ruminant systems in mountain areas

Small ruminant farming is the main rural occupation in mountain areas of Morocco. This activity is subject to numerous pressures, including repeated climatic hazards that modify pastoral resource availability and trigger changes in production systems. This study aimed to identify and analyse changes in availability and utilisation of pastoral resources acknowledged by farmers over the past 40 years for the small ruminant farming systems of the Central High Atlas region of Morocco. We hypothesised, on the basis of previous research, that resilience of the pastoral component of such systems increases with elevation. We interviewed 50 farmers in three municipalities of Azilal province, at moderate (800–1400 m), medium (1400–1800 m) and high (1800–3000 m) elevations. In the 1970–1980s, pastoral resources were abundant and mobile flocks grazed collective rangelands. Subsequently, repeated droughts and the increased stock numbers promoted by agricultural policies led to the deterioration of resource abundance and quality, especially palatable plants. At moderate elevations, wooded areas and phytomass declined; erosion occurred at high elevations. Traditional systems diversified by including agricultural activities. At moderate elevations, livestock farming intensified, with the adoption of a productive breed, concentrate distribution and the grazing of fallow land. Currently, flock mobility is limited and rangelands provide less than 60% of sheep requirements. At high elevations, the pastoral component persisted at the cost of a diversification of pastoral areas and greater flock mobility. Rangelands are still collectively managed and provide almost 90% of sheep requirements. Since rangelands remain a major feed source, changes in pastoral resources can be considered as a major driver of change in livestock systems. The sustainability of small ruminant farming systems at these elevations thus depends on the conservation of rangeland.

Strategic application of wildland fire suppression in the southwestern United States

Much of the western United States is experiencing longer fire seasons with an increased frequency of high-severity fires and fire risk. Fire managers in the southwestern United States have increased efforts to reduce fire risk by managing more fires to meet resource objectives (e.g. thin forests, reduce hazardous fuel loads, and restore the landscape). However, little is known about the situational circumstances and decision space that inform the strategic response to wildland fire. Using generalized and time-to-event modeling techniques, we examined how fire management decisions are reached in a context informed by weather, burning conditions, and subsequent fire behavior. Modeling results captured daily containment probabilities along a gradient from limiting natural conditions to suppression invoked containment. Results inform fire management decisions, future research efforts, and the simulation of wildland fires with resource objectives.

Artificial selection on reproductive timing in hatchery salmon drives a phenological shift and potential maladaptation to climate change

The timing of breeding migration and reproduction links generations and substantially influences individual fitness. In salmonid fishes, such phenological events (seasonal return to freshwater and spawning) vary among populations but are consistent among years, indicating local adaptation in these traits to prevailing environmental conditions. Changing reproductive phenology has been observed in many populations of Atlantic and Pacific salmon and is sometimes attributed to adaptive responses to climate change. The sockeye salmon spawning in the Cedar River near Seattle, Washington, USA, have displayed dramatic changes in spawning timing over the past 50 years, trending later through the early 1990s, and becoming earlier since then. We explored the patterns and drivers of these changes using generalized linear models and mathematical simulations to identify possible environmental correlates of the changes, and test the alternative hypothesis that hatchery propagation caused inadvertent selection on timing. The trend toward later spawning prior to 1993 was partially explained by environmental changes, but the rapid advance in spawning since was not. Instead, since its initiation in 1991, the hatchery has, on average, selected for earlier spawning, and, depending on trait heritability, could have advanced spawning by 1-3 weeks over this period. We estimated heritability of spawning date to be high (h 2 ~0.8; 95% CI: 0.5-1.1), so the upper end of this range is not improbable, though at lower heritabilities a smaller effect would be expected. The lower reproductive success of early spawners and relatively low survival of early emerging juveniles observed in recent years suggest that artificial and natural selection are acting in opposite directions. The fitness costs of early spawning may be exacerbated by future warming; thus, the artificially advanced phenology could reduce the population's productivity. Such artificial selection is known in many salmon hatcheries, so there are broad consequences for the productivity of wild populations comingled with hatchery-produced fish.

The future of resilience-based management in coral reef ecosystems

Resilience underpins the sustainability of both ecological and social systems. Extensive loss of reef corals following recent mass bleaching events have challenged the notion that support of system resilience is a viable reef management strategy. While resilience-based management (RBM) cannot prevent the damaging effects of major disturbances, such as mass bleaching events, it can support natural processes that promote resistance and recovery. Here, we review the potential of RBM to help sustain coral reefs in the 21st century. We explore the scope for supporting resilience through existing management approaches and emerging technologies and discuss their opportunities and limitations in a changing climate. We argue that for RBM to be effective in a changing world, reef management strategies need to involve both existing and new interventions that together reduce stress, support the fitness of populations and species, and help people and economies to adapt to a highly altered ecosystem.

Adaptation Design Tool for Climate-Smart Management of Coral Reefs and Other Natural Resources

Scientists and managers of natural resources have recognized an urgent need for improved methods and tools to enable effective adaptation of management measures in the face of climate change. This paper presents an Adaptation Design Tool that uses a structured approach to break down an otherwise overwhelming and complex process into tractable steps. The tool contains worksheets that guide users through a series of design considerations for adapting their planned management actions to be more climate-smart given changing environmental stressors. Also provided with other worksheets is a framework for brainstorming new adaptation options in response to climate threats not yet addressed in the current plan. Developed and tested in collaboration with practitioners in Hawai'i and Puerto Rico using coral reefs as a pilot ecosystem, the tool and associated reference materials consist of worksheets, instructions and lessons-learned from real-world examples. On the basis of stakeholder feedback from expert consultations during tool development, we present insights and recommendations regarding how to maximize tool efficiency, gain the greatest value from the thought process, and deal with issues of scale and uncertainty. We conclude by reflecting on how the tool advances the theory and practice of assessment and decision-making science, informs higher level strategic planning, and serves as a platform for a systematic, transparent and inclusive process to tackle the practical implications of climate change for management of natural resources.

Protected areas as social-ecological systems: perspectives from resilience and social-ecological systems theory

Conservation biology and applied ecology increasingly recognize that natural resource management is both an outcome and a driver of social, economic, and ecological dynamics. Protected areas offer a fundamental approach to conserving ecosystems, but they are also social-ecological systems whose ecological management and sustainability are heavily influenced by people. This editorial, and the papers in the invited feature that it introduces, discuss three emerging themes in social-ecological systems approaches to understanding protected areas: (1) the resilience and sustainability of protected areas, including analyses of their internal dynamics, their effectiveness, and the resilience of the landscapes within which they occur; (2) the relevance of spatial context and scale for protected areas, including such factors as geographic connectivity, context, exchanges between protected areas and their surrounding landscapes, and scale dependency in the provision of ecosystem services; and (3) efforts to reframe what protected areas are and how they both define and are defined by the relationships of people and nature. These emerging themes have the potential to transform management and policy approaches for protected areas and have important implications for conservation, in both theory and practice.

Legal ecotones: A comparative analysis of riparian policy protection in the Oregon Coast Range, USA

Waterways of the USA are protected under the public trust doctrine, placing responsibility on the state to safeguard public resources for the benefit of current and future generations. This responsibility has led to the development of management standards for lands adjacent to streams. In the state of Oregon, policy protection for riparian areas varies by ownership (e.g., federal, state, or private), land use (e.g., forest, agriculture, rural residential, or urban) and stream attributes, creating varying standards for riparian land-management practices along the stream corridor. Here, we compare state and federal riparian land-management standards in four major policies that apply to private and public lands in the Oregon Coast Range. We use a standard template to categorize elements of policy protection: (1) the regulatory approach, (2) policy goals, (3) stream attributes, and (4) management standards. All four policies have similar goals for achieving water-quality standards, but differ in their regulatory approach. Plans for agricultural lands rely on outcome-based standards to treat pollution, in contrast with the prescriptive policy approaches for federal, state, and private forest lands, which set specific standards with the intent of preventing pollution. Policies also differ regarding the stream attributes considered when specifying management standards. Across all policies, 25 categories of unique standards are identified. Buffer widths vary from 0 to ∼152 m, with no buffer requirements for streams in agricultural areas or small, non-fish-bearing, seasonal streams on private forest land; narrow buffer requirements for small, non-fish-bearing perennial streams on private forest land (3 m); and the widest buffer requirements for fish-bearing streams on federal land (two site-potential tree-heights, up to an estimated 152 m). Results provide insight into how ecosystem concerns are addressed by variable policy approaches in multi-ownership landscapes, an important consideration to recovery-planning efforts for threatened species.

Positives and pathologies of natural resource management on private land-conservation areas

In managed natural resource systems, such as fisheries and rangelands, there is a recognized trade-off between managing for short-term benefits and managing for longer term resilience. Management actions that stabilize ecological attributes or processes can improve productivity in the supply of ecosystem goods and services in the short term but erode system resilience at longer time scales. For example, fire suppression in rangelands can increase grass biomass initially but ultimately result in an undesirable, shrub-dominated system. Analyses of this phenomenon have focused largely on how management actions influence slow-changing biophysical system attributes (such as vegetation composition). Data on the frequency of management actions that reduce natural ecological variation on 66 private land-conservation areas (PLCAs) in South Africa were used to investigate how management actions are influenced by manager decision-making approaches, a largely ignored part of the problem. The pathology of natural resource management was evident on some PLCAs: increased focus on revenue-generation in decision making resulted in an increased frequency of actions to stabilize short-term variation in large mammal populations, which led to increased revenues from ecotourism or hunting. On many PLCAs, these management actions corresponded with a reduced focus on ecological monitoring and an increase in overstocking of game (i.e., ungulate species) and stocking of extralimitals (i.e., game species outside their historical range). Positives in natural resource management also existed. Some managers monitored slower changing ecological attributes, which resulted in less-intensive management, fewer extralimital species, and lower stocking rates. Our unique, empirical investigation of monitoring-management relationships illustrates that management decisions informed by revenue monitoring versus ecological monitoring can have opposing consequences for natural resource productivity and sustainability. Promoting management actions that maintain resilience in natural resource systems therefore requires cognizance of why managers act the way they do and how these actions can gradually shift managers toward unsustainable strategies.

The effects of scenario planning on participant reports of resilience

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of scenario planning on participant ratings of resilience.

Design/methodology/approach

The research design is a quasi experimental pretest/posttest with treatment and control groups. Random selection or assignment was not achieved.

Findings

Results show a significant difference in reports of resilience for the scenario planning treatment group and no significant difference for the control group.

Research limitations/implications

Limitations include the use of self-report perception measures, possible social desirability of responses and a lack of random selection and assignment.

Practical implications

Practical implications imply that scenario planning can be viewed as a legitimate tool for increasing resilience in organizations.

Social implications

Organizations with an ability to adjust quickly and recover from difficult conditions means reduced layoffs and healthy economic growth.

Originality/value

While there is increasing research on scenario planning, to date, none has examined the effects of scenarios on resilience.

The influence of resilience-based management on coral reef monitoring: A systematic review

With rapid changes taking place on coral reefs, managers and scientists are faced with prioritising interventions that might avoid undesirable losses in ecosystem health. The property of resilience captures how reefs react and respond to stressors and environmental changes. Therefore, in principle, management goals are more likely to be realised if resilience theory is used to inform decision making and help set realistic expectations for reef outcomes. Indeed, a new approach to reef management has been termed ‘resilience-based management’ (RBM). Yet, resilience concepts have often been criticised for being vague, difficult to operationalise, and beset by multiple definitions. Here, we evaluate how the advent of RBM has changed one aspect of reef management: assessment and monitoring. We compare the metrics used in conventional monitoring programs with those developed through resilience assessments and find that the latter have a stronger focus on ecological processes and exposure to environmental drivers. In contrast, monitoring tends to focus on metrics of reef state and has greater taxonomic resolution, which provides comprehensive information on the nature of changes but does not predict the future responses of reefs in part because it is difficult to extrapolate statistical trends of complex ecological systems. In addition, metrics measured by resilience studies are more diverse, owing in part to the reliance of state metrics as proxies of processes given the difficulty in quantifying key ecological processes directly. We conclude by describing practical ways of improving resilience assessments, and avenues for future research.

Resilience and Resource Management

Resilience is an umbrella concept with many different shades of meaning. The use of the term has grown over the past several decades to the point that by now, many disciplines have their own definitions and metrics. In this paper, we aim to provide a context and focus for linkages of resilience to natural resources management. We consider differences and similarities in resilience as presented in several disciplines relevant to resource management. We present a conceptual framework that includes environmental drivers, management interventions, and system responses cast in terms of system resilience, as well as a process for decision making that allows learning about system resilience through experience and incorporation of that learning into management. We discuss the current state of operational management for resilience, and suggest ways to improve it. Finally, we describe the challenges in managing for resilience and offer some recommendations about the scientific information needs and scientific issues relevant to making resilience a more meaningful component of natural resources management.

Bison with benefits: towards integrating wildlife and ranching sectors on a public rangeland in the western USA

The North American model of wildlife conservation, based on the public trust doctrine, is credited for the recovery of several charismatic wildlife species, including the plains bison Bison bison. In that model, wildlife is a public resource from which the private sector may not profit either individually or collectively. In recent years, however, resilience thinking is driving changes in the traditional state-run wildlife management model to allow for integrated multi-sector approaches at the landscape scale. A free-ranging herd of bison on public land in the Henry Mountains of Utah is used as a case study to consider if and how a community-based conservation programme could be developed for a state-managed wildlife resource to benefit all stakeholders. The Henry Mountains bison, which are disease-free, share the rangeland with cattle that are privately owned by individual ranchers and corporations with various economic goals and environmental values. The ranchers currently derive no benefits from the bison and have concerns regarding competition between bison and cattle. However, a threshold harvesting strategy with community participation could generate revenue to offset these concerns. It could also provide benefits to the local community, increase state revenue, and increase the size of the bison population while securing its long-term genetic viability. Implementation would initially require facilitation by policy specialists, after which we suggest a Henry Mountains bison partnership could serve as a model for bison recovery efforts elsewhere in North America.

Resilience and tipping points of an exploited fish population over six decades

Complex natural systems with eroded resilience, such as populations, ecosystems and socio-ecological systems, respond to small perturbations with abrupt, discontinuous state shifts, or critical transitions. Theory of critical transitions suggests that such systems exhibit fold bifurcations featuring folded response curves, tipping points and alternate attractors. However, there is little empirical evidence of fold bifurcations occurring in actual complex natural systems impacted by multiple stressors. Moreover, resilience of complex systems to change currently lacks clear operational measures with generic application. Here, we provide empirical evidence for the occurrence of a fold bifurcation in an exploited fish population and introduce a generic measure of ecological resilience based on the observed fold bifurcation attributes. We analyse the multivariate development of Barents Sea cod (Gadus morhua), which is currently the world's largest cod stock, over six decades (1949-2009), and identify a population state shift in 1981. By plotting a multivariate population index against a multivariate stressor index, the shift mechanism was revealed suggesting that the observed population shift was a nonlinear response to the combined effects of overfishing and climate change. Annual resilience values were estimated based on the position of each year in relation to the fitted attractors and assumed tipping points of the fold bifurcation. By interpolating the annual resilience values, a folded stability landscape was fit, which was shaped as predicted by theory. The resilience assessment suggested that the population may be close to another tipping point. This study illustrates how a multivariate analysis, supported by theory of critical transitions and accompanied by a quantitative resilience assessment, can clarify shift mechanisms in data-rich complex natural systems.