The authors in this volume make a case for LTSER’s potential in providing insights, knowledge and experience necessary for a sustainability transition. This expertly edited selection of contributions from Europe and North America reviews the development of LTSER since its inception and assesses its current state, which has evolved to recognize the value of formulating solutions to the host of ecological threats we face. Through many case studies, this book gives the reader a greater sense of where we are and what still needs to be done to engage in and make meaning from long-term, place-based and cross-disciplinary engagements with socio-ecological systems.
The chapters in this book cover a broad range of settings to capture society-nature interactions over long periods of time. The cases studies draw upon a wide range of ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales.
Foreword 1 (Wolfgang Cramer and Steve Carpenter).- Foreword 2 (Donald
Worster).-
1. Introduction. Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research: Scope and
History.- PART I: LTSER Concepts, Methods and Linkages.-
2. Sociometabolic
Transitions and the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production: What
Promise Do They Hold For LTSER?-
3. Integrated Socio-Ecological Modeling:
Experiences From European LTSER Platforms.-
4. Modeling Transport as a Key
Constraint to Urbanization in Pre-Industrial Societies.-
5. The Environmental
History of the Danube River Basin as an Issue of Long-Term Socio-Ecological
Research.-
6. The Relevance of Critical Scales For LTSER.-
7. Biohistory.-
8. Geographic Approaches to LTSER: Principal Themes And Concepts With a Case
Study of Andes-Amazon Watersheds.-
9. The Contribution of Anthropology To
Concepts Guiding LTSER Research.- PART II: LTSER Applications Across
Ecosystems, Time and Space.-
10. Viewing the Urban Socio-Ecological System
Through a Sustainability Lens: Lessons and Prospects From the Central
Arizona-Phoenix LTER Program.-
11. A City and Its Hinterland: Viennas Energy
Metabolism 1800-2006.-
12. Sustaining Agricultural Systems in the Old and New
Worlds: A Long-Term Socio-Ecological Comparison.-
13. How Material and Energy
Flows Change Human Practices and Environments: The Transformation of
Agriculture in the Eisenwurzen Region, 1860-2000.-
14. The Intimacy of
Human-Nature Interactions on Islands.-
15. Global Socio-Metabolic
Transitions.- PART III: LTSER Formations and the Transdisciplinary
Challenge.-
16. Building an Urban LTSER: The Case of the Baltimore Ecosystem
Study and the D.C. / B.C. ULTRA-Ex Project.-
17. Development of LTSER
Platforms in LTER-Europe: Challenges and Experiences in Implementing
Place-Based Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research in Selected Regions.-
18.
Developing Socio-Ecological Research in Finland: Challenges and Progress
Towards a Thriving LTSER Network.-
19. The Eisenwurzen LTSER
Platform(Austria) - Implementation and Services.-
20. Fostering Research Into
Coupled Long-Term Dynamics of Climate, Land Use, Ecosystems and Ecosystem
Services in the Central French Alps.-
21. Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research
in Mountain Regions: Perspectives From the Tyrolean Alps.-
22. Experiences
From the Ötztal Valley in the Tyrolean High Alps: The Transdisciplinary
Challenge.-
23. Conclusions.- Index.
Over the last half century, exceptional changes in the natural environment attributed to human activities have placed renewed importance on the study of society-nature interactions. Around the globe, ever increasing human demands on ecosystems not only harm the environment, but also induce great potential for social conflict. In this sense sustainability problems are not only ecological but also socio-ecological since the ways societies interact with the environment affects both ecosystems and social systems.
The emerging interdisciplinary field of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) is primarily concerned with questions of global environmental change and sustainability. It aims to conceptualise, observe, analyse, and model changes in coupled socio-ecological (or human-environment) systems over one to several generations. Tracking these dynamics and changes in socio-ecological systems over extended periods is accomplished in research traditions that include social and human ecology, industrial ecology, environmental history, human geography and anthropology. In recognising research that takes a long-term perspective on societynature interactions, conceptually and empirically, as well as approaches that engage society in this quest, LTSER aims to provide a knowledge base that helps reorient socio-economic trajectories towards more sustainable pathways.
The authors in this volume make a case for LTSERs potential in providing insights, knowledge and experience necessary for a sustainability transition. This expertly edited selection of contributions from Europe and North America reviews the development of LTSER since its inception and assesses its current state, which has evolved to recognize the value of formulating solutions to the host of ecological threats we face. Through many case studies, this book gives the reader a greater sense of where we are and what still needs to be done to engage in and make meaning fromlong-term, place-based and cross-disciplinary engagements with socio-ecological systems.
