Environmental Social Science : Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability

by Moran, Emilio F.

• ISBN13: 9781405105743
• ISBN10: 1405105747
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Environmental Social Science offers a new synthesis of environmental studies, defining the nature of human-environment interactions and providing the foundation for a new cross-disciplinary enterprise that will make critical theories and research methods accessible across the natural and social sciences. Makes key theories and methods of the social sciences available to biologists and other environmental scientists Explains biological theories and concepts for the social sciences community working on the environment Helps br idge one of the difficult divides in collaborative work in human-environment research Includes much-needed descriptions of how to carry out research that is multinational, multiscale, multitemporal, and multidisciplinary within a complex systems theory context

Author Biography

Emilio F. Moran is Distinguished Professor and Rudy Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Environmental Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
The Challenge of Human-Environment Interactions Research	p. 1
The Evolution of Social Ecological Systems	p. 2
Characterization of Contemporary Global Environmental Changes	p. 7
History of the Development of the Human Dimensions Agenda	p. 16
Characteristics of the Research on the Human Dimensions	p. 20
The Way Forward: Integrative Science	p. 22
Theories and Concepts from the Social Sciences	p. 25
Population, Technology, and Central Place Theories	p. 25
Population and Environment Theories	p. 31
Agency and History	p. 34
Decision-theoretic Approaches	p. 37
Political Economy and Political Ecology	p. 42
Cultural Ecology	p. 46
Theories and Concepts from the Biological Sciences	p. 49
Evolution by Natural Selection	p. 50
Species Respond Individualistically, Not as Communities	p. 51
Interactions with Other Species: Niche and Neutral Theories	p. 52
Top-down vs. Bottom-up Control in Ecosystems	p. 53
Succession	p. 54
Island Biogeography	p. 59
Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Theories	p. 61
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes/Services	p. 62
The Ecosystem Concept in Biology and the Social Sciences	p. 63
Spatially Explicit Approaches	p. 70
Remote Sensing and GIS	p. 74
A Case Study Using GIS/Remote Sensing to Study Amazonian Deforestation	p. 77
Urban-Rural Spatial Dynamics	p. 83
Modeling and GIS	p. 88
Multi-scale and Multi-temporal Analysis	p. 93
An Approach to Multidisciplinary, Multi-scale Research	p. 97
Scale	p. 100
Local Level of Analysis	p. 103
Regional Level of Analysis	p. 106
Global Level of Analysis	p. 108
Future Directions	p. 110
Biocomplexity in Ecological Systems	p. 112
Introduction	p. 112
Spatially Explicit Processes in Ecological and Social Systems	p. 115
Agent-based Modeling of Complex Systems	p. 120
Hierarchical Modeling	p. 124
Conclusions	p. 124
Environmental Decision Making	p. 126
Institutional Analysis	p. 131
Individual Behavior and Environmental Decisions	p. 134
Decisions and Social Context	p. 136
Conclusions	p. 140
Towards Sustainability Science	p. 143
Sustainability Science Research Priorities	p. 145
Scales of Sustainability	p. 149
Cities and Sustainability Science	p. 149
Climate Change and Sustainability	p. 153
Conclusions	p. 156
References	p. 158
Index	p. 203
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