ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5678-7293
Current Organisations
US Environmental Protection Agency
,
Universiteit Utrecht
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-2015
DOI: 10.1890/140294
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2014
DOI: 10.1890/13-1315.1
Abstract: Ecological structures and processes occur at specific spatiotemporal scales, and interactions that occur across multiple scales mediate scale-specific (e.g., in idual, community, local, or regional) responses to disturbance. Despite the importance of scale, explicitly incorporating a multi-scale perspective into research and management actions remains a challenge. The discontinuity hypothesis provides a fertile avenue for addressing this problem by linking measureable proxies to inherent scales of structure within ecosystems. Here we outline the conceptual framework underlying discontinuities and review the evidence supporting the discontinuity hypothesis in ecological systems. Next we explore the utility of this approach for understanding cross-scale patterns and the organization of ecosystems by describing recent advances for examining nonlinear responses to disturbance and phenomena such as extinctions, invasions, and resilience. To stimulate new research, we present methods for performing discontinuity analysis, detail outstanding knowledge gaps, and discuss potential approaches for addressing these gaps.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 31-07-2015
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 12-2017
DOI: 10.1002/2017WR020926
Abstract: Management of urban hydrologic processes using green infrastructure (GI) has largely focused on storm water management. Thus, design and implementation of GI usually rely on physical site characteristics and local rainfall patterns, and do not typically account for human or social dimensions. This traditional approach leads to highly centralized storm water management in a disconnected urban landscape and can deemphasize additional benefits that GI offers, such as increased property value, greenspace aesthetics, heat island amelioration, carbon sequestration, and habitat for bio ersity. We propose the Framework for Adaptive Socio‐Hydrology (FrASH) in which GI planning and implementation moves from a purely hydrology‐driven perspective to an integrated sociohydrological approach. This allows for an iterative, multifaceted decision‐making process that would enable a network of stakeholders to collaboratively set a dynamic, context‐guided project plan for the installation of GI, rather than a “one‐size‐fits‐all” installation. We explain how different sectors (e.g., governance, nongovernmental organizations, communities, academia, and industry) can create a connected network of organizations that work toward a common goal. Through a graphical Chambered Nautilus model, FrASH is experimentally applied to contrasting GI case studies and shows that this multistakeholder, connected, decentralized network with a coevolving decision‐making project plan results in enhanced multifunctionality, potentially allowing for the management of resilience in urban systems at multiple scales.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-09-2018
DOI: 10.1002/ECE3.4297
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-04-2023
DOI: 10.1002/EET.2056
Abstract: Effective governance of social‐ecological systems (SES) is an enduring challenge, especially in coastal environments where accelerating impacts of climate change are increasing pressure on already stressed systems. While resilience is often proposed as a suitable framing to re‐orient governance and management, the literature includes many different, and sometimes conflicting, definitions and ideas that influence how the concept is applied, especially in coastal environments. This study combines discourse analysis of the coastal governance literature and key informant interviews in Tasmania, Australia, demonstrating inconsistencies and confusion in the way that resilience is framed in coastal governance research and practice. We find that resilience is most often framed as (1) a rate of recovery from disturbance or (2) the process of acting in response to, or anticipation of, a disturbance. A third framing considers resilience as an emergent property of SESs. This framing, social‐ecological resilience , accounts for multiple configurations of SES, which necessitates adaptation and transformation strategies to address changes across temporal and spatial scales. Coastal managers recognised the value of this third framing for governing coastal SESs, yet the confusion and inconsistency in the literature was also evident in how they understood and applied resilience in practice. Expanding the use of social‐ecological resilience is essential for more effective coastal governance, given the dynamics of coastal SESs and the intensity of social, economic, and environmental drivers of change these systems face. However, this requires addressing the unclear, confused, and superficial use of resilience‐oriented concepts in research and policy discourse.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-09-2018
DOI: 10.1002/ECY.2508
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-12-2016
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12709
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 03-10-2014
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 29-06-2016
Abstract: Communities of organisms, from mammals to microorganisms, have discontinuous distributions of body size. This pattern of size structuring is a conservative trait of community organization and is a product of processes that occur at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this study, we assessed whether body size patterns serve as an indicator of a threshold between alternative regimes. Over the past 7000 years, the biological communities of Foy Lake (Montana, USA) have undergone a major regime shift owing to climate change. We used a palaeoecological record of diatom communities to estimate diatom sizes, and then analysed the discontinuous distribution of organism sizes over time. We used Bayesian classification and regression tree models to determine that all time intervals exhibited aggregations of sizes separated by gaps in the distribution and found a significant change in diatom body size distributions approximately 150 years before the identified ecosystem regime shift. We suggest that discontinuity analysis is a useful addition to the suite of tools for the detection of early warning signals of regime shifts.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 2022
DOI: 10.1017/SUS.2022.10
Abstract: Our analysis shows that the framing of social vulnerability is shaped by a narrow definition of resilience, focusing on post-disaster return and recovery responses. This perspective does not account for the dynamism and non-stationarity of social-ecological systems (SES) which is becoming increasingly important in the face of accelerating environmental change. Incorporating social-ecological resilience into social vulnerability analysis can improve coastal governance by accounting for adaptation and transformation, as well as scale and cross-scale interactions. Social vulnerability analysis has been unable to deliver outcomes that reflect the reality of vulnerability and its consequences in an era characterised by accelerating environmental change. In this work, we used critical discourse analysis and key informant interviews to understand different framings of social vulnerability in coastal governance and management, globally and in New Zealand. We found that the framing of system vulnerability could vary depending on the definition of resilience adopted, which has critical ramifications for coastal governance of linked systems of humans and nature. We found that the framing of social vulnerability in coastal governance is mainly influenced by engineering, community and disaster resilience, focusing on return and recovery governance responses to environmental change (e.g. hurricanes, wildfires). Instead, we suggest a novel perspective based on social-ecological resilience, which more accurately reflects the dynamics of linked systems of humans and nature (SES). This revised perspective, general vulnerability , accounts for the dynamics of Earth's systems across various spatial and temporal scales in the face of accelerating environmental change. Accounting for social-ecological resilience and its core aspects (i.e. panarchy, adaptation and transformation) is essential for informing coastal governance of SES (Do we adapt? or Do we transform the SES?). Social-ecological resilience is essential for social vulnerability analysis in the face of accelerating environmental change.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-2011
DOI: 10.2981/10-084
Abstract: Early efforts in wildlife management focused on reducing population variability and maximizing yields of selected species. Later, Aldo Leopold proposed the concept of habitat management as superior to population management, and more recently, ecosystem management, whereby ecological processes are conserved or mimicked, has come into favour. Managing for resilience builds upon these roots, and focuses on maintaining key processes and relationships in social‐ecological systems so that they are robust to a great variety of external or internal perturbations at a range of ecological and social scales. Managing for resilience focuses on system‐level characteristics and processes, and the endurance of system properties in the face of social or ecological surprise. Managing for resilience consists of actively maintaining a ersity of functions and homeostatic feedbacks, steering systems away from thresholds of potential concern, increasing the ability of the system to maintain structuring processes and feedbacks under a wide range of conditions, and increasing the capacity of a system to cope with change through learning and adaptation. The critical aspect of managing for resilience, and therefore ecosystem management, is undertaking adaptive management to reduce uncertainty and actively managing to avoid thresholds in situations where maintaining resilience is desired. Managing adaptively for resilience is the approach best suited for coping with external shocks and surprises given the non‐linear complex dynamics arising from linked social‐ecological systems.
Location: United States of America
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Ahjond Garmestani.