ASU Scholarship Showcase

In this synthesis, we hope to accomplish two things: 1) reflect on how the analysis of the new archaeological cases presented in this special feature adds to previous case studies by revisiting a set of propositions reported in a 2006 special feature, and 2) reflect on four main ideas that are more specific to the archaeological cases: i) societal choices are influenced by robustness–vulnerability trade-offs, ii) there is interplay between robustness–vulnerability trade-offs and robustness–performance trade-offs, iii) societies often get locked in to particular strategies, and iv) multiple positive feedbacks escalate the perceived cost of societal change. We then discuss whether these lock-in traps can be prevented or whether the risks associated with them can be mitigated. We conclude by highlighting how these long-term historical studies can help us to understand current society, societal practices, and the nexus between ecology and society.

As part of an international collaboration to compare large-scale commons, we used the Social-Ecological Systems Meta-Analysis Database (SESMAD) to systematically map out attributes of and changes in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) in Australia. We focus on eight design principles from common-pool resource (CPR) theory and other key social-ecological systems governance variables, and explore to what extent they help explain the social and ecological outcomes of park management through time. Our analysis showed that commercial fisheries management and the re-zoning of the GBRMP in 2004 led to improvements in ecological condition of the reef, particularly fisheries. These boundary and rights changes were supported by effective monitoring, sanctioning and conflict resolution. Moderate biophysical connectivity was also important for improved outcomes. However, our analysis also highlighted that continued challenges to improved ecological health in terms of coral cover and biodiversity can be explained by fuzzy boundaries between land and sea, and the significance of external drivers to even large-scale social-ecological systems (SES). While ecological and institutional fit in the marine SES was high, this was not the case when considering the coastal SES. Nested governance arrangements become even more important at this larger scale. To our knowledge, our paper provides the first analysis linking the re-zoning of the GBRMP to CPR and SES theory. We discuss important challenges to coding large-scale systems for meta-analysis.

The Montreal Protocol is generally credited as a successful example of international cooperation in response to a global environmental problem. As a result, the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances has declined rapidly, and it is expected that atmospheric ozone concentrations will return to their normal ranges toward the end of this century. This paper applies the social-ecological system framework and common-pool resource theory to explore the congruence between successful resolution of small-scale appropriation problems and ozone regulation, a large-scale pollution problem. The results of our analysis correspond closely to past studies of the Protocol that highlight the importance of attributes such as a limited number of major industrial producers, advances in scientific knowledge, and the availability of technological substitutes. However, in contrast to previous theoretical accounts that focus on one or a few variables, our analysis suggests that its success may have been the result of interactions between a wider range of SES attributes, many of which are associated with successful small-scale environmental governance. Although carefully noting the limitations of drawing conclusions from the analysis of a single case, our analysis reveals the potential for fruitful interplay between common-pool resource theory and large-scale pollution problems.

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals.

Studies on urban heat island (UHI) have been more than a century after the phenomenon was first discovered in the early 1800s. UHI emerges as the source of many urban environmental problems and exacerbates the living environment in cities. Under the challenges of increasing urbanization and future climate changes, there is a pressing need for sustainable adaptation/mitigation strategies for UHI effects, one popular option being the use of reflective materials. While it is introduced as an effective method to reduce temperature and energy consumption in cities, its impacts on environmental sustainability and large-scale non-local effect are inadequately explored. This paper provides a synthetic overview of potential environmental impacts of reflective materials at a variety of scales, ranging from energy load on a single building to regional hydroclimate. The review shows that mitigation potential of reflective materials depends on a set of factors, including building characteristics, urban environment, meteorological and geographical conditions, to name a few. Precaution needs to be exercised by city planners and policy makers for large-scale deployment of reflective materials before their environmental impacts, especially on regional hydroclimates, are better understood. In general, it is recommended that optimal strategy for UHI needs to be determined on a city-by-city basis, rather than adopting a “one-solution-fits-all” strategy.

Land surface energy balance in a built environment is widely modelled using urban canopy models with representation of building arrays as big street canyons. Modification of this simplified geometric representation, however, leads to challenging numerical difficulties in improving physical parameterization schemes that are deterministic in nature. In this paper, we develop a stochastic algorithm to estimate view factors between canyon facets in the presence of shade trees based on Monte Carlo simulation, where an analytical formulation is inhibited by the complex geometry. The model is validated against analytical solutions of benchmark radiative problems as well as field measurements in real street canyons. In conjunction with the matrix method resolving infinite number of reflections, the proposed model is capable of predicting the radiative exchange inside the street canyon with good accuracy. Modeling of transient evolution of thermal filed inside the street canyon using the proposed method demonstrate the potential of shade trees in mitigating canyon surface temperatures as well as saving of building energy use. This new numerical framework also deepens our insight into the fundamental physics of radiative heat transfer and surface energy balance for urban climate modeling.

Urban environmental measurements and observational statistics should reflect the properties generated over an adjacent area of adequate length where homogeneity is usually assumed. The determination of this characteristic source area that gives sufficient representation of the horizontal coverage of a sensing instrument or the fetch of transported quantities is of critical importance to guide the design and implementation of urban landscape planning strategies. In this study, we aim to unify two different methods for estimating source areas, viz. the statistical correlation method commonly used by geographers for landscape fragmentation and the mechanistic footprint model by meteorologists for atmospheric measurements. Good agreement was found in the intercomparison of the estimate of source areas by the two methods, based on 2-m air temperature measurement collected using a network of weather stations. The results can be extended to shed new lights on urban planning strategies, such as the use of urban vegetation for heat mitigation. In general, a sizable patch of landscape is required in order to play an effective role in regulating the local environment, proportional to the height at which stakeholders’ interest is mainly concerned.

A significant challenge of our time is conserving biological diversity while maintaining economic development and cultural values. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has established biosphere reserves within its Man and the Biosphere program as a model means for accomplishing this very challenge. The East Carpathians Biosphere Reserve (ECBR), spreading across Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, represents a large social-ecological system (SES) that has been protected under the biosphere reserve designation since 1998. We have explored its successes and failures in improving human livelihoods while safeguarding its ecosystems. The SES framework, which includes governance system, actors, resources, and external influences, was used as a frame of analysis. The outcomes of this protected area have been mixed; its creation led to national and international collaboration, yet some actor groups remain excluded. Implementation of protocols arising from the Carpathian Convention has been slow, while deforestation, hunting, erosion, temperature extremes, and changes in species behavior remain significant threats but have also been factors in ecological adaptation. The loss of cultural links and traditional knowledge has also been significant. Nevertheless, this remains a highly biodiverse area. Political barriers and institutional blockages will have to be removed to ensure this reserve fulfills its role as a model region for international collaboration and capacity building. These insights drawn from the ECBR demonstrate that biosphere reserves are indeed learning sites for sustainable development and that this case is exemplary in illustrating the challenges, but more importantly, the opportunities that arise when ensuring parallel care and respect for people and ecosystems through the model of transboundary protected areas around the world.

The net storage heat flux (ΔQ[subscript S]) is important in the urban surface energy balance (SEB) but its determination remains a significant challenge. The hysteresis pattern of the diurnal relation between the ΔQ[subscript S] and net all-wave radiation (Q[superscript ∗]) has been captured in the Objective Hysteresis Model (OHM) parameterization of ΔQ[subscript S]. Although successfully used in urban areas, the limited availability of coefficients for OHM hampers its application. To facilitate use, and enhance physical interpretations of the OHM coefficients, an analytical solution of the one-dimensional advection–diffusion equation of coupled heat and liquid water transport in conjunction with the SEB is conducted, allowing development of AnOHM (Analytical Objective Hysteresis Model). A sensitivity test of AnOHM to surface properties and hydrometeorological forcing is presented using a stochastic approach (subset simulation). The sensitivity test suggests that the albedo, Bowen ratio and bulk transfer coefficient, solar radiation and wind speed are most critical. AnOHM, driven by local meteorological conditions at five sites with different land use, is shown to simulate the ΔQ[subscript S] flux well (RMSE values of ∼ 30 W m[superscript −2]). The intra-annual dynamics of OHM coefficients are explored. AnOHM offers significant potential to enhance modelling of the surface energy balance over a wider range of conditions and land covers.

Protected areas are a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, and increasingly, conservation science is integrating ecological and social considerations in park management. Indeed, both social and ecological factors need to be considered to understand processes that lead to changes in environmental conditions. Here, we use a social-ecological systems lens to examine changes in governance through time in an extensive regional protected area network, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We studied the peer-reviewed and nonpeer-reviewed literature to develop an understanding of governance of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and its management changes through time. In particular, we examined how interacting and changing property rights, as designated by the evolving marine protected area network and other institutional changes (e.g., fisheries management), defined multiple goods and ecosystem services and altered who could benefit from them.

The rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in 2004 substantially altered the types and distribution of property rights and associated benefits from ecosystem goods and services. Initially, common-pool resources were enjoyed as common and private benefits at the expense of public goods (overexploited fisheries and reduced biodiversity and ecosystem health). The rezoning redefined the available goods and benefits and who could benefit, prioritizing public goods and benefits (i.e., biodiversity conservation), and inducing private costs (through reduced fishing). We also found that the original conceptualization of the step-wise progression of property rights from user to owner oversimplifies property rights based on its division into operational and collective-choice rule-making levels. Instead, we suggest that a diversity of available management tools implemented simultaneously can result in interactions that are seldom fully captured by the original conceptualization of the bundling of property rights. Understanding the complexities associated with overlapping property rights and multiple goods and ecosystem services, particularly within large-scale systems, can help elucidate the source and nature of some of the governance challenges that large protected areas are facing.