Category Archives: Tools

Yukon Delta from Space

October 11, 2011 Garry Peterson Leave a comment

A great picture of the organic complexity of the Yukon River Delta from NASA EOS. They write:

The Yukon River originates in British Columbia, Canada, and flows through Yukon Territory before entering Alaska. In southwestern Alaska, the Yukon Delta spreads out in a vast tundra plain, where the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers meander toward the Bering Sea.

The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on the Landsat 7 satellite acquired this natural-color image of the Yukon Delta on September 22, 2002. Looking a little like branching and overlapping blood vessels, the rivers and streams flow through circuitous channels toward the sea, passing and feeding a multitude of coastal ponds and lakes.

The Yukon Delta is an important habitat for waterfowl and migratory birds, and most of the protected refuge is less than 100 feet (30 meters) above sea level. Over such low-lying, mostly treeless terrain, the rivers can change course frequently and carve new channels to find the fastest route toward the sea. The pale color of the sea water around the delta testifies to the heavy sediment load carried by the rivers.

Ecological Economics, Ecological Management

Climate Stablization Wedges – an update, responses and critiques

October 7, 2011 Garry Peterson 9 Comments

A well know proposed strategy for reducing carbon emissions was the 2004 “wedges” paper in by ecologist Stephen Pacala and engineer Robert Socolow (Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1100103). For more on wedges see Carbon Mitigation Initiative website at Princeton.

Robert Socolow has recently published an update on the wedges paper, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which discusses the failures of their proposal, he reaffirms the wedges approach and argues that they should have presented their work differently – specifically:

…advocates for prompt action, of whom I am one, also bear responsibility for the poor quality of the discussion and the lack of momentum. Over the past seven years, I wish we had been more forthcoming with three messages: We should have conceded, prominently, that the news about climate change is unwelcome, that today’s climate science is incomplete, and that every “solution” carries risk. I don’t know for sure that such candor would have produced a less polarized public discourse. But I bet it would have. Our audiences would have been reassured that we and they are on the same team — that we are not holding anything back and have the same hopes and fears.

and he proposes that:

To motivate prompt action today, seven years later, our wedges paper needs supplements: insights from psychology and history about how unwelcome news is received, probing reports about the limitations of current climate science, and sober assessments of unsafe braking.

There are responses onThe Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website and Climate Central that include the Nicholas Stern and others.

Andrew Revkin on DotEarth has an number of US and energy oriented comments from earth system scientist Ken Caldeira, my former colleague at McGill economist Chris Green and others as well as response from Socolow.

Rob Hopkins from Transition Town movement presents a view from local sustainability action. He worries that the wedges approach can actually make our current situaiton worse – in Giving Robert Socolow a Wedgie (so to speak). He argues that systemic strategies that improve local resilience could be much more successful by addressing multiple issues that focusing on energy and CO2.

Socolow argues that part of the blame for the fact that the world hasn’t adopted the wedges approach can be laid at the door of the environmental movement, for being so upbeat and chipper about the impacts and not acknowledging that there will be ‘pain’ alongside the ‘gain’ (as it were). … I think it is far more likely that most of Pacala and Socolow’s wedges are, ultimately, unfeasible due to their own energy intensity and cost in a contracting global economy.

…

Socolow and Pacala’s wedges were conceived and proposed solely as responses to climate change. Yet, of course, climate change is not the only challenge we face. As the World Economic Forum’s recently-released analysis of the risks facing the world over the next 10 years identified, extreme energy price volatility and the fiscal crisis sit alongside climate change, closely followed by economic disparity, collectively leading the field in terms of risks we need to be building resilience to as a matter of urgency

Ecosystem services, Visualization

Conceptualizing Social-Ecological Systems

October 5, 2011 Garry Peterson 2 Comments

I’ve recently been teaching about social-ecological systems and because I think it is important to conceptualize systems graphically these discussions caused me to reflect on the conceptual diagrams of social-ecological systems

Conceptualizing something as a social-ecological system hides some aspects of reality to focus on others. Social-ecological systems focus on the interactions and
Factors that distinguish social-ecological systems from other approach feedbacks between social and ecological, in particular how social and ecological alter one another and “co-evolve.”

As a systems approach it focuses on structures and processes, but because it comes from a resilience orientation in is particularly interested in how these structures persist and reorganize in response to shocks, gradual changes, or purposeful transformations.

Below are a number of different takes on conceptual diagrams of social-ecological systems that I think show some different aspects of social-ecological systems.

There are many other conceptual diagrams of social-ecological systems and I’d welcome any comments that point to other papers that have particularly interesting or different conceptual diagrams.

The full citations of the papers are:

Berkes, Folke, and Colding editors. 2003. Navigating Social Ecological Systems. Cambridge University Press.
Chapin, F.S., Lovecraft, A.L., Zavaleta, E.S., Nelson, J., Robards, M.D., Kofinas, G.P., Trainor, S.F., Peterson, G.D., Huntington, H.P. & Naylor, R.L. (2006) Policy strategies to address sustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response to a directionally changing climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 16637-43. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0606955103
Anderies, J. M., M. A. Janssen, and E. Ostrom. 2004. A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective. Ecology and Society 9(1): 18. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art18/
Bennett, E.M., Peterson, G.D. & Gordon, L.J. (2009) Understanding relationships among multiple ecosystem services. Ecology Letters, 12, 1394-404. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01387.x

General, Tools, Visualization

Scanning the Internet for Ecological Early Warnings

September 21, 2011 Victor Galaz 2 Comments

If Google Flu Trends can, why can’t we? The possibility to mine large amounts of individual reports and local news posted on the Internet as early warning signs of pending epidemic outbreaks has been a part of global epidemic governance for quite some time. The question is; could we do the same for ecological crises? A couple of years ago, a couple of colleagues and I wrote a conceptual piece in Frontiers entitled “Can webcrawlers revolutionize ecological monitoring?” where we elaborated issue. Until today however, the idea hasn’t moved much from its conceptual phase. Luckily, analysts and GIS-experts at the USDA Forest Service, now have begun to test the concept with real world data. In a new paper entitled “Internet Map Services: New portal for global ecological monitoring, or geodata junkyard?”, Alan Ager and colleagues, present initial results from runs with a geodata webcrawler . They report:

At the USDA Forest Service’s Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center (WWETAC), we are exploring webcrawlers to facilitate wildland threat assessments. The Threat Center was established by Congress in 2005 to facilitate the development of tools and methods for the assessment of multiple interacting threats (wildfire, insects, disease, invasive species, climate change, land use change)

The Threat News Explorer (see image) visualizes some of the results.

However, they also note that

much of the online data is stored in large institutional data warehouses (Natureserve, Geodata.gov, etc.) that have their own catalog and searching systems and are not open to webcrawlers like ours. In fact, most federal land management agencies do not allow services to their data, but allow downloading and in-house viewers (i.e. FHTET 2006). This policy does not simplify the problem of integrated threat assessments for federal land management agencies.

The group is now developing a more powerful webcrawler. You can find and search the database for geospatial data and map here. Still a long way to go it seems, but a very important first step!

Visualization

5 000 000 Books

September 20, 2011 Garry Peterson Leave a comment

Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel discuss Google Labs’ NGram Viewer. In their TED talk what can you learn from 5 million books?

Networks, Tools

Social Networks and Natural Resource Management – New Book!

August 4, 2011 Henrik Ernstson Leave a comment

A new book has just been released that should interest the readers of this blog. The book has been excellently edited by Örjan Bodin and Christina Prell and is entitled “Social Networks and Natural Resource Management: Uncovering the Social Fabric of Environmental Governance” (you find it at Cambridge or Amazon).

The book supports the growing subfield that uses network analysis to study social-ecological systems (see earlier post on “Trend Spotting”) and features a foreword by Carl Folke and chapters by several of the authors building and maturing this subfield, including: Beatrice Crona, Saudiel Ramirez-Sanchez, Mark Reed, Klaus Hubacek, David Tindall, Howard Harshaw, J. M. Taylor, Ken Frank, Annica Sandström, Marney Isaac, Evans Dawoe, and myself, Henrik Ernstson.

Please also read about and join NASEBERRY, our e-forum for this subfield.

Below follows the content of the book and an e-mail posted by editor Örjan Bodin on the INSNA list, the leading e-forum on social network analysis:

Letter to INSNA

Hi all!

Over the years there have been some discussions on this list about using SNA in studying natural resource management. This “subfield” has grown in interest, and now there is a fair amount of publications on the subject (see e.g. the Ecology & Society special issue ). In addition, this month a book entitled “Social networks and natural resource management: uncovering the social fabric of environmental governance” is released (see Cambridge or Amazon). The book is intended to provide an overview to this emerging field; offering case studies; critical reflections; research guidance; and some introductory material. […]

Kind regards,

Dr. Örjan Bodin

Theme leader / Associate Professor, Stockholm Resilience Centre & Dept of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University

Content of the book

“Social networks and natural resource management: uncovering the social fabric of environmental governance”, Bodin and Prell (eds), 2011, Cambridge University Press:

Foreword Carl Folke

Part I. Introduction:

1. A social relational approach to natural resource governance, Örjan Bodin, Saudiel Ramirez-Sanchez, Henrik Ernstson and Christina Prell;

2. Some basic structural characteristics of networks Christina Prell;

3. Combining social network approaches with social theories to improve understanding of natural resource governance, Beatrice Crona, Henrik Ernstson, Christina Prell, Mark Reed and Klaus Hubacek;

Part II. Case Studies:

4. Barriers and opportunities in transforming to sustainable governance: the role of key individuals, Örjan Bodin and Beatrice Crona;

5. Social network analysis for stakeholder selection, Christina Prell, Mark Reed and Klaus Hubacek;

6. Who and how: engaging well-connected fishers in social networks to improve fisheries management and conservation, Saudiel Ramirez-Sanchez;

7. The effects of social network ties on the public’s satisfaction with forest management in British Columbia, Canada, David Tindall, Howard Harshaw and J. M. Taylor;

8. Social network models for natural resource use and extraction, Ken Frank;

9. Friends or neighbors? Subgroup heterogeneity and the importance of bonding and bridging ties in natural resource governance, Beatrice Crona and Örjan Bodin;

10. The role of individual attributes in the practice of information sharing among fishers from Loreto, BCS, Mexico, Saudiel Ramirez-Sanchez;

11. Transformative collective action: a network approach to transformative change in ecosystem-based management, Henrik Ernstson; (see blog post on this chapter here)

12. Social networks, joint image building and adaptability – the case of local fishery management, Annica Sandström;

13. Agrarian communication networks: consequences for agroforestry, Marney Isaac and Evans Dawoe;

Part III. Summary and Outlook:

14. Social network analysis in natural resource governance – summary and outlook, Örjan Bodin and Christina Prell

Links, Networks

Links – reviews

July 20, 2011 Garry Peterson Leave a comment

1. Cosma Shalizi discusses recent paper in nature on networks and their controlability, and responses to it.

2. Tom Slee reviews network sociologist Ducan Watts – everything is obvious if you already know the answer.

3. Misha Glenny, author of McMafia, reviews Federico Varese’s new book Mafias on the Move: How Organised Crime Conquers New Territories in London Review of Books.

4. And not a review of a book, but a model. Chemist Ugo Bardi has written a book Limits to Growth revisited that reviews the 1973 Limits to Growth study, its critics, its misrepresentation, and its continued relevance.

Adaptation, Ecological Management, Ideas

Stafford Beer on Ross Ashby

July 16, 2011 Garry Peterson 3 Comments

Here is some old time systems theory from my Swedish summer reading.

Stafford Beer on Ross Ashby‘s Law of Requisite Variety in his paper “The Viable System Model: Its Provenance, Development, Methodology and Pathology” in The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 7-25

It has always seemed to me that Ashby’s Law stands to management science as Newton’s Laws stand to physics; it is central to a coherent account of complexity control. “Only variety can destroy variety.” People have found it tautologous; but all mathematics is either tautologous or wrong. People have found it truistic; in that case, why do managers constantly act as if it were false? Monetary controls do not have requisite variety to regulate the economy. The Finance Act does not have requisite variety to regulate tax evasion. Police procedures do not have requisite variety to suppress crime. And so on. All these regulators could be redesigned according to cybernetic principles…

Much more on Beer and Ashby can be found in Andrew Pickering’s fine book – the Cybernetic Brain – sketches of another future.

Visualization

if history = people x years

June 29, 2011 Garry Peterson Leave a comment

From Two thousand years in one chart | The Economist.

SOME people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person’s life is just as much a part of mankind’s story as another’s. If people do make history, as this democratic view suggests, then two people make twice as much history as one. Since there are almost 7 billion people alive today, it follows that they are making seven times as much history as the 1 billion alive in 1811. The chart below shows a population-weighted history of the past two millennia. By this reckoning, over 28% of all the history made since the birth of Christ was made in the 20th century. Measured in years lived, the present century, which is only ten years old, is already “longer” than the whole of the 17th century. This century has made an even bigger contribution to economic history. Over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010, according to an updated version of updated version of Angus Maddison’s figures.

The history of goods and services in some ways can be roughly considered as humanity’s impact on the planet. But that view assumes that economic activity has been consistent in its impacts on the planet.

Resilience Science