The human dimension has become globally interconnected, through technology, capital markets and systems of governance with decisions in one place influencing people and ecosystems elsewhere. Local communities are subject to decision from regional levels and connected to global markets and vice versa.

Reduced temporal variability of renewable resource flows in some parts of the world has resulted in increased spatial dependence on other areas on earth, reflected in e.g. widespread ecosystem support to urban areas.

Societal development supported by ecosystems
In this context it becomes clear that patterns of production, consumption and wellbeing develop not only from economic and social relations within and between regions, but to be sustained also depend on the capacity of ecosystems throughout the world to support societal development.

Social conditions, health, culture, democracy, and matters of security, survival and the environment are interwoven in a grand panorama of regional and worldwide dependency.

Social-ecological systems are therefore linked across temporal and spatial scales and levels of organization. New insights are emerging on cross-scale interactions in social-ecological systems including drivers of land use change and on governance systems that allow for learning and responding to environmental feedback and change.

Thus cross-scale, or cross-system, interactions are a critical research frontier for social-ecological systems.

How do multiple subsystems interact to create, or erode, resilience? What kinds of social-ecological configurations lead to sustainable versus unsustainable societies?

These are important questions that are just beginning to be addressed.