Soils, landscapes, and cultural concepts of favor and disfavor within complex adaptive systems and ResourceCultures: human-land interactions during the Holocene

We review and contrast three frameworks for analyzing human-land interactions in the Holocene: the traditional concept of favored and disfavored landscapes, the new concept of ResourceCultures from researchers at University of Tübingen, and complex adaptive systems, which is a well-established contemporary approach in interdisciplinary research. Following a theoretical integration of fundamental concepts, we analyze three paired case studies involving modern agriculture in Germany and Belize, prehistorical changes in land use in southwest Germany, and aquaculture on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. We conclude that ResourceCultures and complex adaptive systems provide different but complementary strengths, but that both move beyond the favor-disfavor concept for providing a holistic, system-level approach to understanding human-land interactions. The three frameworks for understanding human responses to contemporary cultural and biophysical challenges are relevant to new thinking related to sustainability, resilience, and long-term environmental planning in the Anthropocene.