ORCID Profile
0000-0002-0138-8655
Current Organisation
Arizona State University
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 22-02-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S43247-021-00112-Y
Abstract: As planetary boundaries loom, there is an urgent need to develop sustainable equilibriums between societies and the resources they consume, thereby avoiding regime shifts to undesired states. Transient system trajectories to a stable state may differ substantially, posing significant challenges to distinguishing sustainable from unsustainable trajectories. We use stylized models to show how feedbacks between anthropogenic harvest regimes and resource availability drive transient dynamics. We show how substantial time lags may occur between interventions and social-ecological outcomes, and that sudden system collapses need not be linked to recent environmental changes. Historical reconstructions of island state populations show a variety of transient dynamics that closely corresponds to model expectations based on island differences in productivity and harvesting regime. We conclude that vulnerable social-ecological systems may persist when the population:resource ratio remains within a viable range of intermediate (rather than small) values, which implies that averting environmental crises may require counter-intuitive measures.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 12-09-2017
DOI: 10.5194/ESD-2017-78
Abstract: Abstract. Changes to climate-carbon cycle feedbacks may significantly affect the Earth System’s response to greenhouse gas emissions. These feedbacks are usually analysed from numerical output of complex and arguably opaque Earth System Models (ESMs). Here, we construct a stylized global climate-carbon cycle model, test its output against complex ESMs, and investigate the strengths of its climate-carbon cycle feedbacks analytically. The analytical expressions we obtain aid understanding of carbon-cycle feedbacks and the operation of the carbon cycle. We use our results to analytically study the relative strengths of different climate-carbon cycle feedbacks and how they may change in the future, as well as to compare different feedback formalisms. Simple models such as that developed here also provide workbenches for simple but mechanistically based explorations of Earth system processes, such as interactions and feedbacks between the Planetary Boundaries, that are currently too uncertain to be included in complex ESMs.
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 08-2017
DOI: 10.1002/2017EF000562
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-07-2019
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 28-03-2022
DOI: 10.5194/EGUSPHERE-EGU22-13540
Abstract: & & We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth System resilience.& Our notion of World-Earth System resilience emphasizes the need to move beyond the basin of attraction notion of resilience as we are not in a basin we can stay in. We are on a trajectory to a new basin and we have to avoid falling into undesirable basins.& We thus focus on `pathway resilience', i.e. the relative number of paths that allow us to move from the transitional operating space we occupy now as we leave the Holocene basin& to a safe and just operating space in the Anthropocene. We develop a mathematical model to formalize this conceptualization and demonstrate how interactions between earth system resilience& (biophysical processes) and world system resilience (social processes) impact pathway resilience.& Our findings show that building earth system resilience is probably our only chance to reach a safe and just operating space.& We also illustrate the importance of world system dynamics by showing how the notion of fairness coupled with regional inequality affects pathway resilience.& & &
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-01-2021
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 11-2018
DOI: 10.1029/2018EF000852
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-02-2020
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 17-05-2018
Abstract: Abstract. Changes to climate–carbon cycle feedbacks may significantly affect the Earth system's response to greenhouse gas emissions. These feedbacks are usually analysed from numerical output of complex and arguably opaque Earth system models. Here, we construct a stylised global climate–carbon cycle model, test its output against comprehensive Earth system models, and investigate the strengths of its climate–carbon cycle feedbacks analytically. The analytical expressions we obtain aid understanding of carbon cycle feedbacks and the operation of the carbon cycle. Specific results include that different feedback formalisms measure fundamentally the same climate–carbon cycle processes temperature dependence of the solubility pump, biological pump, and CO2 solubility all contribute approximately equally to the ocean climate–carbon feedback and concentration–carbon feedbacks may be more sensitive to future climate change than climate–carbon feedbacks. Simple models such as that developed here also provide workbenches for simple but mechanistically based explorations of Earth system processes, such as interactions and feedbacks between the planetary boundaries, that are currently too uncertain to be included in comprehensive Earth system models.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-08-2020
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-08-2019
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 07-08-2023
Abstract: The Anthropocene is characterized by the strengthening of planetary-scale interactions between the biophysical Earth system (ES) and human societies. This increasing social-ecological entanglement poses new challenges for studying possible future World-Earth system (WES) trajectories and World-Earth resilience defined as the capacity of the system to absorb and regenerate from anthropogenic stresses such as greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes. The WES is currently in a non-equilibrium transitional regime of the early Anthropocene with arguably no plausible possibilities of remaining in Holocene-like conditions while sheltering up to 10 billion humans without risk of undermining the resilience of the ES. We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth resilience to examine this risk. Because conventional ball-and-cup type notions of resilience are h ered by the rapid and open-ended social, cultural, economic and technological evolution of human societies, we focus on the notion of ‘pathway resilience’, i.e. the relative number of paths that allow the WES to move from the currently occupied transitional states towards a safe and just operating space in the Anthropocene. We formalize this conceptualization mathematically and provide a foundation to explore how interactions between ES resilience (biophysical processes) and World system (WS) resilience (social processes) impact pathway resilience. Our analysis shows the critical importance of building ES resilience to reach a safe and just operating space. We also illustrate the importance of WS dynamics by showing how perceptions of fairness coupled with regional inequality affects pathway resilience. The framework provides a starting point for the analysis of World-Earth resilience that can be extended to more complex model settings as well as the development of quantitative planetary-scale resilience indicators to guide sustainable development in a stabilized ES.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 05-10-2018
Abstract: Abstract. Robustness and resilience are concepts in systems thinking that have grown in importance and popularity. For many complex social-ecological systems, however, robustness and resilience are difficult to quantify and the connections and trade-offs between them difficult to study. Most studies have either focused on qualitative approaches to discuss their connections or considered only one of them under particular classes of disturbances. In this study, we present an analytical framework to address the linkage between robustness and resilience more systematically. Our analysis is based on a stylized dynamical model that operationalizes a widely used conceptual framework for social-ecological systems. The model enables us to rigorously delineate the boundaries of conditions under which the coupled system can be sustained in a long run, define robustness and resilience related to these boundaries, and consequently investigate their connections. The results reveal the trade-offs between robustness and resilience. They also show how the nature of such trade-offs varies with the choice of certain policies (e.g., taxation and investment in public infrastructure), internal stresses, and uncertainty in social-ecological settings.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 15-01-2018
DOI: 10.5194/ESD-2017-124
Abstract: Abstract. Robustness and resilience are concepts in systems thinking that have grown in importance and popularity. For many complex social-ecological systems, however, robustness and resilience are difficult to quantify and the connections and trade-offs between them difficult to study. Most studies have either focused on qualitative approaches to discuss their connections or considered only one of them under particular classes of disturbances. In this study, we present an analytical framework to address the linkage between robustness and resilience more systematically. Our analysis is based on a stylized dynamical model that operationalizes a widely used conceptual framework for social-ecological systems. The model enables us to rigorously delineate the boundaries of conditions under which the coupled system can be sustained in a long run, define robustness and resilience related to these boundaries, and consequently investigate their connections. The results reveal the tradeoffs between robustness and resilience. They also show how the nature of such tradeoffs varies with the choices of certain policies (e.g., taxation and investment in public infrastructure), internal stresses and external disturbances.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-04-2022
DOI: 10.1007/S13280-022-01721-3
Abstract: Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in public demand for an earth stewardship vision. Here, we draw on empirical studies and theory to show that movement toward a stewardship vision can be facilitated by changes in either policy incentives or social norms. Our novel contribution is to point out that both norms and incentives must change and can do so interactively. This can be facilitated through leverage points and complementarities across policy areas, based on values, system design, and agency. Potential catalysts include novel democratic institutions and engagement of non-governmental actors, such as businesses, civic leaders, and social movements as agents for redistribution of power. Because no single intervention will transform the world, a key challenge is to align actions to be synergistic, persistent, and scalable.
Publisher: Authorea, Inc.
Date: 23-06-2023
DOI: 10.22541/ESSOAR.168748475.57934606/V1
Abstract: Designing urban water systems to respond to the accelerating and unpredictable changes of the Anthropocene will require changes not only to built infrastructure and operating rules, but also to the governance arrangements responsible for investing in them. Yet, inclusion of this political-economic feedback in dynamic models of infrastructure systems and socio-hydrology has significantly lagged behind operational feedback concerns. We address this gap through a dynamical systems application of the Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, which provides the conceptual building blocks for analyzing social-ecological systems through various classes of infrastructure and the flows of material and information among them. In the model, political-economic feedback involves three decisions - infrastructure investment, rate-setting, and short-term demand curtailment - and each decision is constrained by institutional friction, the aggregation of decision and transaction costs associated with taking action. We apply the model to three cities in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area to compare how institutional friction interacts with a city’s water resource portfolio and financial position to determine its sensitivity to reductions in Colorado River water availability. We find that the slowing effect of institutional friction on investment and rate-setting decisions can increase the sensitivity of a city’s supply, but it can also promote objectives that compete with over-response (e.g., rate burden). The effect is dependent on the initial operating capacity of the CIS and flexibility within the institutions, highlighting the need to consider political-economic and operational feedback together when evaluating infrastructure systems.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-01-2023
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 18-02-2020
Abstract: Many small-scale, self-organized systems have persisted for hundreds of years and been the subject of studies seeking to understand effective governance. The lack of formal analytically tractable models of such coupled infrastructure systems hinders linking knowledge gained from those studies to such concepts as resilience and robustness. Here, we develop a stylized, generic model of these systems. The analysis clarifies complex interactions and feedbacks that yield different system outcomes. The boundaries between these outcomes are expressed in clear functions of biophysical and socioeconomic factors and can potentially be used to develop resilience metrics. Such regime boundaries clarify how changes in biophysical and socioeconomic drivers affect the system outcome and what changes in governance may be required to maintain its sustainability.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2021
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 12-05-2021
Abstract: Locust outbreaks have impacted agricultural societies for millennia, they persist today, and humans aim to manage them using preventative strategies. While locusts have been a focus for natural sciences for more than a century, social sciences remain largely underrepresented. Yet, organizational, economic, and cultural variables substantially impact these management strategies. The social sciences are one important means through which researchers and practitioners can better understand these issues. This paper examines the scope and purpose of different subfields of social science and explores how they can be applied to different issues faced by entomologists and practitioners to implement sustainable locust research and management. In particular, we discuss how environmental governance studies resonate with two major challenges faced by locust managers: implementing a preventative strategy over a large spatial scale and managing an intermittent outbreak dynamic characterized by periods of recession and absence of the threat. We contend that the social sciences can help facilitate locust management policies, actions and outcomes that are more legitimate, salient, robust, and effective.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-08-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2020
No related grants have been discovered for John Anderies.