Linking scales and disciplines : an interdisciplinary cross-scale approach to supporting climate-relevant ecosystem management
Date
2019-09-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer Nature
Abstract
Southern Africa is particularly sensitive to climate change, due to both ecological and socioeconomic
factors, with rural land users among the most vulnerable groups. The provision of
information to support climate-relevant decision-making requires an understanding of the
projected impacts of change and complex feedbacks within the local ecosystems, as well as
local demands on ecosystem services. In this paper, we address the limitation of current
approaches for developing management relevant socio-ecological information on the projected
impacts of climate change and human activities.We emphasise the need for linking disciplines
and approaches by expounding the methodology followed in our two consecutive projects.
These projects combine disciplines and levels of measurements from the leaf level
(ecophysiology) to the local landscape level (flux measurements) and from the local household
level (socio-economic surveys) to the regional level (remote sensing), feeding into a variety of
models at multiple scales. Interdisciplinary, multi-scaled, and integrated socio-ecological
approaches, as proposed here, are needed to compliment reductionist and linear, scalespecific
approaches. Decision support systems are used to integrate and communicate the data
and models to the local decision-makers.
Description
CITATION: Berger, C. et al. 2019. Linking scales and disciplines : an interdisciplinary cross-scale approach to supporting climate-relevant ecosystem management. Climatic Change, 156:139–150, doi:10.1007/s10584-019-02544-0.
The original publication is available at https://www.springer.com/journal/10584
The original publication is available at https://www.springer.com/journal/10584
Keywords
Climate change -- South Africa, Socioeconomic -- Factors, Ecosystem management -- Africa, Southern, Population biology -- Climatic factors -- Mathematical models
Citation
Berger, C. et al. 2019. Linking scales and disciplines : an interdisciplinary cross-scale approach to supporting climate-relevant ecosystem management. Climatic Change, 156:139–150, doi:10.1007/s10584-019-02544-0.