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We used the adaptive cycle as a heuristic to conceptualize the changes in ecosystem services between its phases (growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization) for Chiloé Island (southern Chile), analyzed as a social-ecological system. We generated hypothetical relationships between services and phases based on literature articles, testing them with secondary databases for 1826-2016 and interviews with local actors. Results show that the island is currently either in a late conservation phase or already in a collapse phase. Only provisioning ecosystem services corresponded with the proposed phases' relationships, while regulation-maintenance and cultural services showed long-term decreasing trends. We discuss cross-scale interactions and political centralism as the main factors preventing a local adaptive scheme that may start a reorganization phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban systems, and regions more generally, are the epicenters of many of today’s social issues. Yet they are also the global drivers of technological innovation, and thus it is critical that we understand their vulnerabilities and what makes them resilient to different types of shocks. We take regions to be systems composed of internal networks of interdependent components. As the connectedness of those networks increases, it allows information and resources to move more rapidly within a region. Yet, it also increases the speed and efficiency at which the effects of shocks cascade through the system. Here we analyzed regional networks of interdependent industries and how their structures relate to a region’s vulnerability to shocks. Methodologically, we utilized a metric of economic connectedness called tightness which quantifies a region’s internal connectedness relative to other regions. We calculated tightness for German regions during the Great Recession, comparing it to each region’s economic performance during the shock (2007–2009) and during recovery (2009–2011). We find that tightness is negatively correlated with changes in economic performance during the shock but positively during recovery. This suggests that regional economic planners face a tradeoff between being more productive or being more vulnerable to the next economic shock.

A key challenge of the Anthropocene is to confront the dynamic complexity of systems of people and nature to guide robust interventions and adaptations across spatiotemporal scales. Panarchy, a concept rooted in resilience theory, accounts for this complexity, having at its core multiscale organization, interconnectedness of scales, and dynamic system structure at each scale. Despite the increasing use of panarchy in sustainability research, quantitative tests of its premises are scarce, particularly as they pertain to management consequences in ecosystems. In this study we compared the physicochemical environment of managed (limed) and minimally disturbed reference lakes and used time series modeling and correlation analyses to test the premises of panarchy theory: (1) that both lake types show dynamic structure at multiple temporal scales, (2) that this structure differs between lake types due to liming interacting with the natural disturbance regime of lakes, and (3) that liming manifests across temporal scales due to cross-scale connectivity. Hypotheses 1 and 3 were verified whereas support for hypothesis 2 was ambiguous. The literature suggests that liming is a "command-and-control" management form that fails to foster self-organization manifested in lakes returning to pre-liming conditions once management is ceased. In this context, our results suggest that redundance of liming footprints across scales, a feature contributing to resilience, in the physicochemical environment alone may not be enough to create a self-organizing limed lake regime. Further research studying the broader biophysical lake environment, including ecological communities of pelagic and benthic habitats, will contribute to a better understanding of managed lake panarchies. Such insight may further our knowledge of ecosystem management in general and of limed lakes in particular.

Coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S. have been severely altered by human development, and climate change and other stressors are now further degrading the capacity of those ecological and social systems to remain resilient in the face of such disturbances. We sought to identify potential ways in which local conservation interests in the Lowcountry of South Carolina (USA) could participate in a social process of adaptation planning, and how that process might ultimately be broadened to engage a more diverse set of partners. We engaged participants through a combination of informal meetings, workshops, and other collaborative interactions to explore how the conservation community perceives and pursues its various missions, and how that community might confront the threats and opportunities in its future. Coproduction of knowledge and meaning were facilitated by collaborative scenario planning and strategic planning evaluation, which illuminated how the conservation community is integral to the broader governance of the region and highlighted how responses to forces of change are mediated through local culture, economics, and politics. We suggest an interpretation of conservation in which the fundamental objectives of both social and ecological systems might be prioritized in tandem, rather than narrowly focusing on environmental protection without consideration of the social landscape. Ultimately, adaptive capacity depends on the ability to act collectively, and social capital, trust, and organization greatly influence the capacity to act. Thus, we conclude that the presence of strong social networks, coordination and deliberation among diverse stakeholders, mechanisms for experiential feedback, and emphasis on social learning are key elements needed to build adaptive capacity. Central to the evolving perspective of governance of the commons is recognition that social and ecological systems are coupled; the issues and problems of one cannot be addressed without considering the consequences for the other. Moreover, a dominant theme emerging from our research and that of other scholars is the importance of culture and place attachment, which generates social cohesion and facilitates problem solving. These ideas have important implications for when, where, and how stakeholders are engaged to address the rapid changes being experienced by socialecological systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests are complex adaptive systems in which properties at higher levels emerge from localized networks of many entities interacting at lower levels, allowing the development of multiple ecological pathways and processes. Cavity-nesters exist within networks known as "nest webs" that link trees, excavators, e.g. woodpeckers, and nonexcavators (many songbirds, ducks, raptors, and other organisms) at the community level. We use the idea of panarchy (interacting adaptive cycles at multiple spatio-temporal scales) to expand the nest web concept to levels from single tree to biome. We then assess properties of nest web systems (redundancy, heterogeneity, memory, uncertainty, and nonlinearity) using examples from our studies in temperate, subtropical, and tropical forests of the Americas. Although nest webs from Chile, Canada, Argentina, and Ecuador have independent evolutionary histories, structures, and disturbance regimes, they share the main properties of complex adaptive systems. Heterogeneity, redundancy, and memory allow nest web systems to absorb some degree of disturbance without undergoing a regime shift; that is, without changing their basic structures and functions, i.e., the system's identity. Understanding nest webs as complex adaptive systems will inform management practices to nurture the resilience of forest biodiversity in the face of local, regional, and global social-ecological changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can computers make our designs more intelligent and better informed? This is the implication of the theme of the special issue. Architectural design is often thought of as the design of the object, and design models of architecture seek to explicate this process. As an architect, however, I cannot subscribe to that view. In this particular article, I will explore how computational approaches have illuminated and expanded my work to enable the interaction of these themes across scores of projects. Underpinning the projects are foundational concepts: design is real, complex, inclusive, emergent and evil. Design is grounded in reality and facts, that we can derive design outcomes from a deep and unblemished understanding of the world around us. It is not a stylistic escape. Reality is complex. Architectural design has sought to simplify. This was inescapable when projects are so large yet need to be communicated succinctly. 'Less is more' justified this approach. In town planning, this is evident in the tool of zoning. Parse the problem and then address each piece. What we do is part of a larger effort. The field of architecture seeks distinction. Design theories want to distinguish and elevate architecture. But if design is complex and it is real, then it is tied to messy realism. Designing has to become accessible to other realms of knowledge. Designing is the seeking of opportunity. For many, design is simply finding the answer – think of Herbert Simon's statement that design is problem solving. Design reveals opportunities, and these emergent conditions are to be grasped. As designers, our decisions have implications. We know now that what we build has future implications in ways that are profound. When we define design as problem solving, we ignore the truth that design is problem making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the socio-ecological resilience within China's Northeast National Forest Region (NNFR), focusing on the implications of climate change for forest management and carbon sequestration. It offers a critical assessment of the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) and the associated logging ban policy, recognizing their pivotal contributions to forest conservation but also identifying the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all approach. Integrating panarchy theory, the study proposes sustainable management practices that align ecological dynamics with societal needs, emphasizing nature-based solutions. The overarching aim is to bolster the long-term resilience and enhance the carbon sequestration potential of the NNFR's forests. It aims to inform global environmental strategy with lessons from the NNFR, advocating for integrated approaches that ensure both ecological sustainability and community prosperity. This approach seeks to provide a comprehensive and effective strategy for addressing environmental challenges, ensuring both ecological integrity and community well-being. • Current regulations of natural forests have threatened to exceed critical socio-ecological thresholds. • Prevailing studies on Northeast National Forest Region of China for socio-ecological system resilience are scarce. • Resilience thinking is required to tackle efficient natural resource management. • Application of Panarchy theory highlights the cross-scale interactions growth of coupling social and ecological sub-systems. • Nature-based solution could help restore socio-ecological resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is widely regarded as a "wicked problem" due to its complexity, interconnectedness, and the numerous stakeholders involved in finding a solution. The wickedness of climate change is further compounded by effects which are often nonlinear and uncertain, making it difficult to predict and manage its impacts. This paper builds on the growing body of knowledge on wicked problems by proposing an integrated heuristic that facilitates management in diverse economic and sociopolitical contexts by capturing the origins and dynamics of contemporary global socioenvironmental wicked problems and their potential resolution. The heuristic can also serve as the basis for a holistic wicked problem macro-theory. It is recognised that wicked problems such as climate change amplify into crisis states due to poverty and rigidity traps embedded within a system panarchy, which impede effective action for adaptation and mitigation. The concept of the "virtuous challenge" is embedded within the heuristic as a vital link in governance to enable effective leadership in the management of contemporary wicked problems through focused incremental transformation and a shift to an "agrowth" imperative. It is acknowledged that collaboration between stakeholders in the Global North and Global South is necessary for successful responses to virtuous challenges. • Wicked problems are contextualised within an integrated conceptual heuristic • "Virtuous challenges" in the heuristic facilitate wicked problem governance • Tree-planting is a virtuous challenge relevant to climate change • The heuristic provides the basis for a wicked problem macro-theory [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural activity replaces natural vegetation with cultivated land and it is a major cause of local and global climate change. Highly specialized agricultural production leads to extensive monoculture farming with a low biodiversity that may cause low landscape resilience. This is the case on the Salento peninsula, in the Apulia Region of Italy, where the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium has caused the mass destruction of olive trees, many of them in monumental groves. The historical land cover that characterized the landscape is currently in a transition phase and can strongly affect climate conditions. This study aims to analyze how the destruction of olive groves by X. fastidiosa affects local climate change. Land surface temperature (LST) data detected by Landsat 8 and MODIS satellites are used as a proxies for microclimate mitigation ecosystem services linked to the evolution of the land cover. Moreover, recurrence quantification analysis was applied to the study of LST evolution. The results showed that olive groves are the least capable forest type for mitigating LST, but they are more capable than farmland, above all in the summer when the air temperature is the highest. The differences in the average LST from 2014 to 2020 between olive groves and farmland ranges from 2.8 °C to 0.8 °C. Furthermore, the recurrence analysis showed that X. fastidiosa was rapidly changing the LST of the olive groves into values to those of farmland, with a difference in LST reduced to less than a third from the time when the bacterium was identified in Apulia six years ago. The change generated by X. fastidiosa started in 2009 and showed more or less constant behavior after 2010 without substantial variation; therefore, this can serve as the index of a static situation, which can indicate non-recovery or non-transformation of the dying olive groves. Failure to restore the initial environmental conditions can be connected with the slow progress of the uprooting and replacing infected plants, probably due to attempts to save the historic aspect of the landscape by looking for solutions that avoid uprooting the diseased plants. This suggests that social-ecological systems have to be more responsive to phytosanitary epidemics and adapt to ecological processes, which cannot always be easily controlled, to produce more resilient landscapes and avoid unwanted transformations.

The adaptive cycle and panarchy are recognised tools for resilience assessment prior to establishing new management approaches aligned with Anthropocene needs. This study used the adaptive cycle and panarchy to assess the dynamics of the social-ecological system (SES) of La Marjaleria, Spain, which experienced increasing human pressure and environmental degradation in recent decades, and developed the ‘adaptive curve’ as a novel graphical representation of system change in the presentation of the results. Based on a literature review of historical changes in La Marjaleria, a SES analysis was performed using the adaptive cycle and panarchy, following the Resilience Alliance’s Practitioners Guide. The assessment offered new insights into the social and ecological dynamics of La Marjaleria through identification of causes and consequences from a complex systems perspective. Previous land-use management in the area has generated tensions between different stakeholders and reduced environmental resilience. The systems thinking approach highlighted the complexity of change processes, offering the possibility of new routes for dialogue and understanding. The ‘adaptive curve’ developed as a method of illustrating interactions across scales in this study could be useful for synthesising the results of a panarchy analysis and supporting their interpretation, offering relevant departure points for future planning and decision-making.

Theory related to resilience thinking proposes that complex systems evolve in nested adaptive cycles. However, concrete examples are needed to instantiate this proposition and show what merit it might have in practice. This empirical study used a mesoscale landscape that has experienced mining activity and has faced challenges related to environmental protection and sustainable development. Adopting the perspective of resilience thinking, this study investigated the historical dynamics of a post-mining area in Shanxi Province and considered its future development. In the studied area, the main income source was found to have shifted from agriculture to coal mining activity between 1983 and 2010, with more than 41% of the land being used for mining operations. Such activity degraded the net primary productivity of the local ecosystem. The socio-ecological system experienced two states: traditional agriculture and mining. The evolution of the past adaptive cycles was mainly driven by coal exploitation and environmental degradation within the mining area, as well as the cross-scale interactions of economic events and coal policy changes outside the mining area. As a result of exhausted coal resources and small-scale mining closures, the socio-ecological system is currently in a poverty trap. Based on an assessment of the socio-ecological system's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, a new eco-agriculture can be considered an option for future transformation. The post-mining landscape is apparently a coupled socio-ecological system characterized by panarchy and temporal dynamics. Internal resources and cross-scale interactions, such as the regional-scale demand for agricultural products, could help reorganize the stagnant system. This case study shows that a mesoscale landscape can be a sally port for the application and operation of resilience-thinking-related theory, such as panarchy. This concrete example manifests the proposition that complex systems undergo cycles of renewal and collapse and can be nested in adaptive cycles. The merit of this proposition is not just that it helps to establish a theoretical understanding of the dynamics of complex systems; more importantly, it also generates practical measures to manage such dynamics. This case study supports the existence and importance of regional resilience in maintaining or restoring local economies. On these grounds, we propose that resilience thinking can act as a mental model and practical tool for understanding the historical dynamics of stagnant systems, such as legacy mining sites, and navigate their transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To aid our understanding of prehispanic social change in a subcontinental context, this article presents data and analysis relating to the occupational histories of 351 Mississippian platform mound sites in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Based on the premise that sites with platform mounds served as the administrative and ritual centers for Mississippian polities, our study demonstrates that polities in the study area rose and fell with some regularity, and in many cases, new polities succeeded old ones in the same locations. Our work expands on a previous analysis of 47 northern Georgia area sites. Through a theoretical framework tailored for macroregional processes and a rule-based approach in collecting and standardizing data from previous work, this study serves as an example for incorporating different processes and regions to provide a more coherent and complete picture of the Mississippian macroregion. Our results show that polity cycling was typical in our study area, and we argue that the rise and fall of polities is best described within a theoretical framework emphasizing collapse and resilience. By treating collapse as a normal feature of Mississippian polities, we can better understand the interconnectedness of Mississippian polities across regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Boko Haram refugee crisis nearly doubles grazing pressure in Logone Floodplain. • Ideal free distribution in floodplain persists despite arrival of pastoralist refugees. • Long-term data on livestock populations indicates resilience of pastoral system. • Open access to common-pool resources is key to resilience of open property regime. Previous studies have shown that the open property regime of mobile pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain, Cameroon works as a complex adaptive system in which individual movement decisions result in an ideal free distribution of grazing pressure over common-pool grazing resources. Recently, the humanitarian crisis in the Chad Basin caused by Boko Haram has resulted in the arrival of thousands of pastoralist refugees from Northeastern Nigeria in the Far North Region of Cameroon. In this paper, we examine the impact of pastoralist refugees on the resilience of the open property regime. First, we describe the migratory flight of pastoralists. Second, we examine whether and how the pastoralist refugee crisis affected the open property regime, in particular the distribution of pastoralists over grazing resources. Data were collected in a longitudinal and interdisciplinary study that integrated spatial and ethnographic approaches to describe and explain the distribution of pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain from 2008 to 2016. The results show that the number of pastoralist refugees from Nigeria exceeds 1000 households with an estimated 100,000 cattle. However, despite the large number of pastoralist refugees, we continue to find evidence of an ideal free distribution of pastoralists over grazing resources in the Logone Floodplain. Moreover, we found that pastoralists, while frustrated by the increasing grazing pressure, remained committed to the ethos of open access. The study offers evidence of the resilience of the open property regime and we discuss the reasons for the resilience of this complex adaptive system using the concept of panarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We used the adaptive cycle as a heuristic to conceptualize the changes in ecosystem services between its phases (growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization) for Chiloé Island (southern Chile), analyzed as a social-ecological system. We generated hypothetical relationships between services and phases based on literature articles, testing them with secondary databases for 1826-2016 and interviews with local actors. Results show that the island is currently either in a late conservation phase or already in a collapse phase. Only provisioning ecosystem services corresponded with the proposed phases' relationships, while regulation-maintenance and cultural services showed long-term decreasing trends. We discuss cross-scale interactions and political centralism as the main factors preventing a local adaptive scheme that may start a reorganization phase.

Coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S. have been severely altered by human development, and climate change and other stressors are now further degrading the capacity of those ecological and social systems to remain resilient in the face of such disturbances. We sought to identify potential ways in which local conservation interests in the Lowcountry of South Carolina (USA) could participate in a social process of adaptation planning, and how that process might ultimately be broadened to engage a more diverse set of partners. We engaged participants through a combination of informal meetings, workshops, and other collaborative interactions to explore how the conservation community perceives and pursues its various missions, and how that community might confront the threats and opportunities in its future. Coproduction of knowledge and meaning were facilitated by collaborative scenario planning and strategic planning evaluation, which illuminated how the conservation community is integral to the broader governance of the region and highlighted how responses to forces of change are mediated through local culture, economics, and politics. We suggest an interpretation of conservation in which the fundamental objectives of both social and ecological systems might be prioritized in tandem, rather than narrowly focusing on environmental protection without consideration of the social landscape. Ultimately, adaptive capacity depends on the ability to act collectively, and social capital, trust, and organization greatly influence the capacity to act. Thus, we conclude that the presence of strong social networks, coordination and deliberation among diverse stakeholders, mechanisms for experiential feedback, and emphasis on social learning are key elements needed to build adaptive capacity. Central to the evolving perspective of governance of the commons is recognition that social and ecological systems are coupled; the issues and problems of one cannot be addressed without considering the consequences for the other. Moreover, a dominant theme emerging from our research and that of other scholars is the importance of culture and place attachment, which generates social cohesion and facilitates problem solving. These ideas have important implications for when, where, and how stakeholders are engaged to address the rapid changes being experienced by social-ecological systems.

Cities are among the best examples of complex systems. The adaptive components of a city, such as its people, firms, institutions, and physical structures, form intricate and often non-intuitive interdependencies with one another. These interdependencies can be quantified and represented as links of a network that give visibility to otherwise cryptic structural elements of urban systems. Here, we use aspects of information theory to elucidate the interdependence network among labor skills, illuminating parts of the hidden economic structure of cities. Using pairwise interdependencies we compute an aggregate, skills-based measure of system “tightness” of a city’s labor force, capturing the degree of integration or internal connectedness of a city’s economy. We find that urban economies with higher tightness tend to be more productive in terms of higher GDP per capita. However, related work has shown that cities with higher system tightness are also more negatively affected by shocks. Thus, our skills-based metric may offer additional insights into a city’s resilience. Finally, we demonstrate how viewing the web of interdependent skills as a weighted network can lead to additional insights about cities and their economies.

Forests are complex adaptive systems in which properties at higher levels emerge from localized networks of many entities interacting at lower levels, allowing the development of multiple ecological pathways and processes. Cavity-nesters exist within networks known as "nest webs" that link trees, excavators, e.g. woodpeckers, and nonexcavators (many songbirds, ducks, raptors, and other organisms) at the community level. We use the idea of panarchy (interacting adaptive cycles at multiple spatio-temporal scales) to expand the nest web concept to levels from single tree to biome. We then assess properties of nest web systems (redundancy, heterogeneity, memory, uncertainty, and nonlinearity) using examples from our studies in temperate, subtropical, and tropical forests of the Americas. Although nest webs from Chile, Canada, Argentina, and Ecuador have independent evolutionary histories, structures, and disturbance regimes, they share the main properties of complex adaptive systems. Heterogeneity, redundancy, and memory allow nest web systems to absorb some degree of disturbance without undergoing a regime shift; that is, without changing their basic structures and functions, i.e., the system's identity. Understanding nest webs as complex adaptive systems will inform management practices to nurture the resilience of forest biodiversity in the face of local, regional, and global social-ecological changes.

Panarchy is a heuristic of complex system 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 management of social-ecological systems.

Abstract An effective and efficient stewardship of natural resources requires consistency across all decision-informing approaches and components involved, i.e., managerial, governmental, political, and legal. To achieve this consistency, these elements must be aligned under an overarching management goal that is consistent with current and well-accepted knowledge. In this article, we investigate the adoption by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of an environmental resilience-centered system that manages for resilience of marine ecological resources and its associated social elements. Although the framework is generally tailored for this Bureau, it could also be adapted to other federal or non-federal organizations. This paper presents a dynamic framework that regards change as an inherent element of the socio-ecological system in which management structures, e.g., federal agencies, are embedded. The overall functioning of the management framework being considered seeks to mimic and anticipate environmental change in line with well-accepted elements of resilience-thinking. We also investigate the goal of using management for resilience as a platform to enhance socio-ecological sustainability by setting specific performance metrics embedded in pre-defined and desired social and/or ecological scenarios. Dynamic management frameworks that couple social and ecological systems as described in this paper can facilitate the efficient and effective utilization of resources, reduce uncertainty for decision and policy makers, and lead to more defensible decisions on resources. Highlights • A resilience-based framework is studied for efficient natural resource management. • The management framework is expanded and adapted to a specific organization. • Nested panarchies are used to couple social and ecological sub-systems. • The environmental management framework is used to analyze two practical examples. • The management framework could be adapted to other organizations or groups of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Scholars argue that conventional environmental governance approaches have not been effective in reversing or slowing the deterioration of coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). Recent research suggests that resilience thinking offers a useful framework to analyse problems in SESs and could help improve the effectiveness of associated governance systems. Much of the available literature explores this from a theoretical perspective, identifying advantages from resilience thinking to improve governance of SESs. This paper builds on this literature, creating a set of attributes that are used to assess the specific challenges of a particular multi-level Tasmanian coastal governance context, and thus clarify where intervention responses are best directed. In this context, a low level of resilience capacity was apparent across the entire governance system. At the national level, we determined that knowledge management and sharing processes, and the diversity of expertise were the only attributes contributing to resilience capacity, with other attributes insufficiently developed to support any level of resilience. The performance was similarly poor at the Tasmanian state level, with leadership, adaptive planning, organisational flexibility and a supportive legislation framework at critically low capacity. Inter-organisational attributes also required significant improvement. On the other hand, a regional natural resource management body and two coastal local governments demonstrated attributes supportive of resilience capacity, including aspects related to leadership, transparent decision-making, stakeholder engagement, organisational learning, knowledge sharing and flexibility. These findings confirm that resilience thinking can offer practical suggestions for how to improve governance of this, particularly challenging context. Highlights • Resilience-based coastal governance has adaptational and transformational capacities. • Sixteen attributes are proposed for developing resilience-based governance. • The overall resilience capacity of Tasmanian coastal governance is low. • Improving resilience capacity requires strategic planning and leadership support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the emergence of formal and informal bridging organizations to facilitate solutions to water conflict at the scale of the water resource. This new approach to governance is of particular importance on rivers within or shared by countries in which water management is fragmented among national and sub-national levels of government as well as among governmental sectors. This article focuses on the Columbia River Basin, in the United States and Canada. Review of the Columbia River Treaty governing shared management of the river has opened a public dialogue on river governance. Treaty review coincides with change in both the biophysical setting and the values and capacity of basin residents. Climate change is altering the timing of flow relied on by the management of developed river infrastructure and the annual runs of the basins’ salmonid species. River development increased economic development in the basin, but at the cost of ecosystem function. Assertion of legal rights by indigenous communities has brought an alternative world view to the review—one that seeks to maintain the benefits of river development while reconciling that development with ecosystem function. This article identifies the governance mechanisms needed to achieve reconciliation and describes their emergence in the Columbia River Basin through an analytical framework focused on local capacity building and network formation across jurisdictions, sectors, and scales of governance. Both countries fragment water management authority among jurisdictions and sectors, but bridging organizations have emerged to link interests and government at the watershed and basin scale. Emergence of new governance is facilitated by increases in local, regional, and indigenous governance capacity. This networked governance emerging at the biophysical scale while embedded in and linked to a hierarchy of formal international, national, state, and local government is characterized as the ecology of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the newly French « dike risk ». As “dike risk” is conflict-prone and contradictory-looking, it challenges previous risk understanding and management. Yet, it proves the capacity of Humankind to admit limitations found while acting, an issue which crisscrosses various research fields on environment, including climate change. “Dike risk” is also in line with new research on resilience thinking and knowledge management systems. They justify turning to a systemic approach of risk understanding and management.

We use adaptive cycle theory to improve the understanding of cycles of urban change in the city of Barcelona, Spain, from 1953 to 2016. More specifically, we explore the vulnerabilities and windows of opportunity these cycles of change introduced in the release (Ω) and reorganization (α) phases. In the two recurring cycles of urban change analyzed (before and after 1979), we observe two complementary loops. During the front loop, financial and natural resources are efficiently exploited by homogenous dominant groups (private developers, the bourgeoisie, politicians, technocrats) with the objective of promoting capital accumulation based on private (or private-public partnership) investments. During the back loop, change is catalyzed by heterogeneous urban social networks (neighborhood associations, activists, squatters, cooperatives, nongovernmental organizations) whose objectives are diverse but converge in their discontent with the status quo and their desire for a "common good" that includes social justice, social cohesion, participatory governance, and well-being for all. The heterogeneity of these social networks (shadow groups) fosters learning, experimentation, and social innovation and gives them the flexibility that the front loop's dominant groups lack to trigger growing pressures for transformation, not only within, but also across spatial and temporal dimensions, promoting panarchy. At the end, the reorganization phase (α) becomes a competition or negotiation between potential directions and outcomes (including conservative leanings and intentional bottom-up change) to restore the former system.