Environmental Social Science: Human - Environment interactions and Sustainability

by Emilio F. Moran (Indiana University, USA)

• ISBN13: 9781444319064
• ISBN10: 144431906X
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• 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

Table of Contents

Preface

The Challenge of Human-Environment Interactions Research

The Evolution of Social Ecological Systems

Characterization of Contemporary Global Environmental Changes

History of the Development of the Human Dimensions Agenda

Characteristics of the Research on the Human Dimensions

The Way Forward: Integrative Science

Theories and Concepts from the Social Sciences

Population, Technology and Central Place Theories

Population and Environment Theories

Agency and History

Decision-theoretic Approaches

Political Economy and Political Ecology

Cultural Ecology

Theories and Concepts from the Biological Sciences

Evolution by Natural Selection

Species respond individualistically, not as communities, to environmental change

Interactions with other species help determine if a particular species will persist in a particular place (Niche and Neutral Theories)

Top-down vs. bottom-up control in ecosystems

Succession

Island Biogeography

Equilibrium/non-equilibrium theories of competition, coexistence, community composition

Biodiversity and ecosystem processes/services

The Ecosystem Concept in Biology and the Social Sciences

Spatially-Explicit Approaches

Remote Sensing and GIS

A Case Study using GIS/ Remote Sensing to study Amazonian Deforestation

Urban-rural spatial dynamics

Modeling and GIS

Multi-Scale and Multi-temporal Analysis

An approach to multi-disciplinary, multi-scale research

Scale

Local level of analysis

Regional Level of Analysis

Global Level of Analysis

Future Directions

Bio-complexity in Ecological Systems

Spatially-explicit Processes in Ecological and Social Systems

Agent-Based Modeling of Complex Systems

Hierarchical Modeling

Conclusions

Environmental Decision-Making

Institutional Analysis

Individual Behavior and Environmental Decisions

Decisions and Social Context

Conclusions

Towards Sustainability Science

Sustainability Science Research Priorities

Scales of Sustainability

Cities and Sustainability Science

Climate Change and Sustainability

Conclusions

Bibliography

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