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Moving beyond the panarchy heuristic
Citation:
Angeler, D., A. Garmestani, C. Allen, AND L. Gunderson. Moving beyond the panarchy heuristic. Advances in Ecological Research. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands, 69:69-81, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aecr.2023.10.005
Impact/Purpose:
· This research enhances understanding of how to improve ecosystem management, which has critical ramifications for better environmental outcomes. The work advances research on ecosystem management by analyzing the issue and providing guidance for moving forward. In the long-term, improving ecosystem management has broad-scale implications for coral reefs and the environment in the United States, with particular interest for Regions (2 and 4), communities (Puerto Rico, USVI), and the general public.
Description:
Panarchy is a heuristic of complex systems change rooted in resilience science. The concept has been rapidly assimilated across scientific disciplines due to its potential to envision and address sustainability challenges, such as climate change and regime shifts, that pose significant challenges for humans in the Anthropocene. However, panarchy has been studied almost exclusively via qualitative research. Quantitative approaches are scarce and preliminary but have revealed novel insights that allow for a more nuanced understanding of the heuristic and resilience science more generally. In this roadmap, we discuss the potential for future quantitative approaches to panarchy. Transdisciplinary development of quantitative approaches, combined with advances in data accrual, curation and machine learning, may build on current tools. Combined with qualitative research and traditional approaches used in ecology, quantification of panarchy may allow for broad inference of change in complex systems of people and nature and provide critical information for the management of social—ecological systems.
