Frontiers in Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS): Current Progress and Future Opportunities

The special symposium at the NSF headquarters enabled CHANS scientists to engage with representatives from multiple directorates and divisions of NSF and representatives of other federal agencies.  The event began with a set of short presentations on critical CHANS contexts and on methodological and conceptual advances by PIs of a few select projects.  This was followed by a lively discussion on prospects and opportunities.

The PIs who presented and their abstracts are:

C. Michael Barton, Arizona State University
Coupling the Past, Present and Future of Socio‐Ecological Systems: The Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics Project
Abstract:
The Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics Project (MedLand) has brought together a highly interdisciplinary and international team of scientists to develop a new research environment for studying the recursive interactions of agropastoral landuse and landscape evolution. We are coupling diverse advanced modeling approaches and combining them with empirical data from archaeology, history, ethnography, paleoecology, and land-use studies to create a computational modeling laboratory for controlled experiments on the short, medium, and very long-term consequences of different land-use practices. With a rich, empirical database to parameterize and improve the MedLand Laboratory, this research environment not only helps us understand past Mediterranean socio-ecological systems, but also has the potential to offer more robust forecasts of the future consequences of land-use today. In this way, the MedLand Project exemplifies the broad, potential benefits of CNH research.

Laurie Drinkwater, Cornell University
Hypoxia and the Mississippi River Basin as a Model System: What are the Key Linkages Governing the Social‐ Ecological Interface?
Abstract:
The Mississippi River Basin is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions and exemplifies the multiple ecological and social risks of industrial agriculture. Significant societal resources directed toward mitigating the environmental impacts of intensive agricultural production have met with little success. Our project focused on identifying the key social-ecological linkages governing the trajectory of agricultural intensification in the Basin and the societal responses to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Our case suggests that anthropogenic environmental change and risks are assimilated into social systems at many levels as they unfold over the course of decades. Degraded ecosystems and the services they provide become the 'new normal', making it possible to continue business as usual.  Public and private institutions receive information documenting ecosystem change, i.e. mass balances and water quality data document both the source and extent of the problem, but this information is discounted. Geographic proximity to the Gulf has a minor impact on the response to hypoxia.  In the contemporary institutional context, ecosystem services which are not valued by political and economic structures in the U.S. cannot compete with the other outcomes delivered by these agricultural landscapes such as production of food, biofuels, exclusive property rights and wealth creation.

Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Michigan State University
From Local to Global Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Pandas, People, Policies, and Planet
Abstract:
There has been an increasing number of local case studies on coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). However, comparatively little work has addressed the ways in which findings and approaches developed from local studies can be applied to studies at regional, national, and global levels. With support from NSF and other agencies, a team of interdisciplinary and international researchers has been conducting CHANS research in Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (China) since 1995. Wolong, one of the largest nature reserves (200,000 ha) for the protection of panda habitat, is home to approximately 10% of the world’s wild pandas, and to more than 4,500 local people (mainly farmers) in some 1,100 households.  There are complex interactions among panda habitat, people, and policies in the reserve. Many results and methods from research in Wolong have not only been applied to and compared with other local study areas around the world, but have also been scaled up to regional, national, and global levels. For instance, observations about household proliferation and environmental impacts of divorce in Wolong have inspired studies at the global level; studies on policy interactions and insights for nature reserve management from Wolong have been applied to national and regional levels; and methods of habitat analysis in Wolong have been used at the regional level. Our experience demonstrates that CHANS research at the local level is useful to CHANS studies and management at other levels (including the planetary level) despite vastly different socioeconomic, political, institutional, cultural, demographic, ecological, biophysical, climatic, and geographic conditions.

Brad Murray, Duke University
With Sea‐Level Rise and Changing Storms, Humans React To Shoreline Erosion- but Shorelines React Back
Abstract:
When faced with persistent coastal erosion, communities often react by stabilizing the shoreline, commonly through repeated ‘beach replenishment.’ Recent numerical modeling work has shown that even a single community holding the shoreline position fixed by importing sand to keep pace with erosion can significantly affect shoreline change for surprisingly large alongshore distances. Patterns of large-scale coastline change are affected by localized human manipulations even as the humans are affected by coastline change. These two-way couplings between coastal processes and human dynamics also mean that shoreline stabilization efforts at one town affect, positively or negatively, the erosion rates, and therefore real estate values, of other towns along the coastline. Such impacts can occur even when towns are not adjacent to one another.  Changing storm climates tend to accelerate long-term shoreline change rates, intensifying the feedbacks between humans and coastline evolution.  We developed an empirically based economic model in which beach replenishment decisions are based on erosion rates, property values, and the costs for replenishment sand. Coupling this work to the large-scale coastline change model allows us to explore how coastal communities affect each other’s fates and the shape of the coastline under different sea-level rise, climate change, and sand-cost scenarios.

Colin Polsky, Clark University
A CNH Platform for Integrating Across and Within Disciplines: Mapping and Modeling the Causes and Consequences of Suburbanization in Boston
Abstract:
Suburbanization may be this country’s most significant source of land-use and -cover change. This process is the target of substantial social, environmental and even political concern. It is also a poorly understood process in scientific terms. The CNH program has provided an invaluable platform for examining the social drivers and socio-ecological implications of suburbanization. This presentation illustrates both scientific and outreach progress from one such CNH project focused on two suburban Boston watersheds. Apart from a set of scientific advances, two related, important meta-findings, one general and one specific, have emerged to date from this particular CNH project. First, doing inter-disciplinary research means much more than just speaking across the classic social-natural science divide. The knowledge gaps and barriers within traditional scholarly disciplines are at times as important as those between disciplines. Second, high-resolution mapping can be a powerful means for catalyzing not only the desired inter-disciplinary research but also the mandated outreach to stakeholders at multiple levels. Our <1m parcel-level land-cover classification (emphasizing “lawns”) is, in addition to being scientifically interesting on its own, immediately understandable – and intriguing – to scientists and stakeholders of many different backgrounds.