Publications

Lindkvist, E., Wijermans, N., Daw, T.M., Gonzalez-Mon, B., et.al. 2020. Navigating Complexities: Agent-Based Modeling to Support Research, Governance, and Management in Small-Scale Fisheries. Front. Mar. Sci., 17 January 2020, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00733

The sustainable governance and management of small-scale fisheries (SSF) is challenging, largely due to their dynamic and complex nature. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a computational modeling approach that can account for the dynamism and complexity in SSF by modeling entities as individual agents with different characteristics and behavior, and simulate how their interactions can give rise to emergent phenomena, such as over...

Hertz, T., Garcia, M.,M., Schlüter, M. 2020. From nouns to verbs: How process ontologies enhance our understanding of social‐ecological systems understood as complex adaptive systems. People and Nature, https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10079

Research on social‐ecological systems (SES) has highlighted their complex and adaptive character and pointed to the importance of recognizing their intertwined nature. Yet, we often base our analysis and governance of SES on static and independent objects, such as actors and resources which are not well suited to address complexity and intertwinedness. This bias, which is largely implicit, has its roots in substance ontologies...

Schill, C., J. M. Anderies, T. Lindahl, C. Folke, S. Polasky, J. C. Cárdenas, A.-S. Crépin, M. A. Janssen, J. Norberg, and M. Schlüter. 2019. A more dynamic understanding of human behaviour for the Anthropocene. Nature Sustainability 2:1075–1082.

Human behaviour is of profound significance in shaping pathways towards sustainability. Yet, the approach to understanding human behaviour in many fields remains reliant on overly simplistic models. For a better understanding of the interface between human behaviour and sustainability, we take work in behavioural economics and cognitive psychology as a starting point, but argue for an expansion of this work by adopting a more ...

Schlüter, M., Orach, K., Lindkvist, E., Martin, R., Wijermans, N. et al. 2019. Toward a methodology for explaining and theorizing about social-ecological phenomena. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Volume 39, August 2019, Pages 44-53

Explanations that account for complex causation, emergence, and social-ecological interdependence are necessary for building theories of social-ecological phenomena. Social-ecological systems (SES) research has accumulated rich empirical understanding of SES; however, integration of this knowledge toward contextualized generalizations, or middle-range theories, remains challenging. We discuss the potential of an iterative and ...

Schlüter, M., L. J. Haider, S. J. Lade, E. Lindkvist, R. Martin, K. Orach, N. Wijermans, and C. Folke. 2019. Capturing emergent phenomena in social-ecological systems: an analytical framework. Ecology and Society 24(3):11.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11012-240311

 Social-ecological systems (SES) are complex adaptive systems. Social-ecological system phenomena, such as regime shifts, transformations, or traps, emerge from interactions among and between human and nonhuman entities within and across scales. Analyses of SES phenomena thus require approaches that can account for (1) the intertwinedness of social and ecological processes and (2) the ways they jointly give rise to emergent so...

Ringsmuth, A.K., Lade, S.J., Schlüter, M. 2019. Cross-scale cooperation enables sustainable use of a common-pool resource. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286 Proc. R. Soc. B

In social-ecological systems (SESs), social and biophysical dynamics interact within and between the levels of organization at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs) are interdependences between processes at different scales, generating behaviour unpredictable at single scales. Understanding CSIs is important for improving SES governance, but they remain understudied. Theoretical models are neede...

Lago, M., Boteler, B., Rouillard, J., Abhold, K. et.al. 2019. Introducing the H2020 AQUACROSS project: Knowledge, Assessment, and Management for AQUAtic Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services aCROSS EU policies. Science of The Total Environment, Volume 652, 20 February 2019, Pages 320-329

The AQUACROSS project was an unprecedented effort to unify policy concepts, knowledge, and management of freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems to support the cost-effective achievement of the targets set by the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. AQUACROSS aimed to support EU efforts to enhance the resilience and stop the loss of biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems as well as to ensure the ongoing and future provision of aqu...

Lippe, M., Bithell, M., Gotts, N., Natalini, D., Barbrook-Johnson, P., et.al. 2019. Using agent-based modelling to simulate social-ecological systems across scales. GeoInformatica, April 2019, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 269–29

Agent-based modelling (ABM) simulates Social-Ecological-Systems (SESs) based on the decision-making and actions of individual actors or actor groups, their interactions with each other, and with ecosystems. Many ABM studies have focused at the scale of villages, rural landscapes, towns or cities. When considering a geographical, spatially-explicit domain, current ABM architecture is generally not easily translatable to a regio...

Mancilla Garcia, M., Hertz, T., Schlüter, M. 2019. Towards a process epistemology for the analysis of social-ecological systems. Environmental Values. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/096327119X15579936382608

This paper proposes an epistemological approach to analyse social-ecological systems from a process perspective in order to better tackle the co-constitution of the social and the ecological and the dynamism of these systems. It highlights the usefulness of rethinking our conceptual tools taking processes and relations as the main constituents of reality instead of fundamental substances or essences. We introduce the concept o...

Schlüter, M., B. Müller, and K. Frank. 2019. The potential of models and modeling for social-ecological systems research: the reference frame ModSES. Ecology and Society 24(1):31.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10716-240131

 Dynamic models have long been a common tool to support management of ecological and economic systems and played a prominent role in the early days of resilience research. Model applications have largely focused on policy assessment, the development of optimal management strategies, or analysis of system stability. However, modeling can serve many other purposes such as understanding system responses that emerge from complex i...