Workshop on Metacoupling

A workshop on metacoupling was held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 3, 2024.

Metacoupling: A New Interdisciplinary Frontier for Global Sustainability

Global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and landscape fragmentation, are increasingly influenced by local and distant forces. Factors like globalization, environmental changes, disasters, natural processes, social unrest, war, and many other human activities connect humans and nature worldwide. These interconnections are made possible through various processes, including animal migration, species invasion, human migration, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, transfer of pollutants and wastes, trade of goods and products, flows of ecosystem services, environmental and hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism. They form metacoupling -- human-nature interactions within a system and across adjacent and distant systems. Metacouplings have profound implications for sustainability as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. For example, farmers convert forest landscapes for food production to meet demands from local populations and those in adjacent and distant places. To help integrate and understand various interconnections and feedback comprehensively and systematically, the metacoupling framework has been developed. In this workshop, we introduced the framework, presented applications of the framework, and conducted hands-on exercises. Workshop participants had opportunities to apply the framework to various case studies.  https://www.ialena.org/workshops-2024.html.

Approximately 30 participants from around the world attended the workshop at IALE-NA Annual Meeting 2024.