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IDR Team Summary 3
Develop social and technical capabilities to
respond to abrupt changes in ecosystem services.
CHALLENGE SUMMARY
Abrupt changes to ecosystem services imply rapid changes in the
structure and function of ecosystems such that thresholds or tipping points
are reached that affect the quantity or quality of the expected services from
the ecosystem. Much attention has been given to abrupt climate change
(e.g., Alley et al. 2003; Lenton et al. 2008), and various studies point to
past abrupt changes, such as the flushing of Lake Agassiz into the North
Atlantic shutting down the thermohaline circulation and generating global
cooling. Owing to the sharp loss or change in services, the presumption is
that the affected human population will experience a disservice, perhaps
registered as disaster.
A substantial research tradition examines societal risk and hazards to
environmental events. Much attention has also been given to human re-
sponses to environmental events (e.g., tornadoes, tsunamis, floods), which
may be viewed as abrupt disservices. More recently, attention has focused
on the vulnerability and resilience of social-ecological systems under stress,
illuminating the interactions among the two subsystems and the synergies
and tradeoffs in their respective responses. This work, perhaps more often
than not, suggests abrupt changes in ecosystem services involve the emer-
gent properties of complex social-ecological systems, such as the Dust Bowl
on Great Plains of the U.S. generated by climate and land management
interactions (Cook et al. 2009); and the human responses to these proper-
ties are far more complex and nuanced than is captured in popular societal
collapse interpretations.
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24 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Much of the work on abrupt emergent properties is hypothetical and
that on human responses captured in (pre)historical interpretations, before
the human-environment conditions of the Anthropocene. The challenge
is gleaning the lessons about societal responses to projected and “surprise”
abrupt changes in the Anthropocene.
Key Questions
• What are the types of projected abrupt change for which society has
demonstrated a willingness to prepare?
• What characteristics of changes in ecosystem services and societal
coping mechanisms make human populations more robust and resilient,
and less vulnerable to abrupt change?
Reading
Alley RB, Marotzke J, Nordhaus WD, Overpeck JT, Peteet DM, Pielke Jr. RA, Pierreumbert
RT, Rhines PB, Stocker TF, Talley LD, and Wallace JM. Abrupt climate change. Science
2003;299:2005-2010.
Cook BJ, Miller RL, and Seager R. Amplification of the North American “Dust Bowl” drought
through human-induced degradation. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2009;106:4997-5001.
Dillehay TD and Kolata AL. Long-term human response to uncertain environmental
conditions in the Andes. Proc Nat Acad Sci 2004;101(12):4325-4330.
Lenton TM, Held H, Kriegler E, Hall JW, Lucht W, Rahmstorf S, and Joachim Schellnhuber H.
Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2008;105:1786-1793.
Stafford Smith MD, McKeon GM, Watson LW, Henry BK, Stone GS, Hall WB, and
Howden SM. Learning from episodes of degradation and recovery in variable Australian
rangelands. Proc Nat Acad Sci 2007;104(52):20609-95.
IDR TEAM MEMBERS
• Wai Kin (Victor) Chan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• George Hornberger, Vanderbilt University
• Jane Carter Ingram, Wildlife Conservation Society
• Louise E. Jackson, University of California, Davis
• Gregory M. Masters, University of Maryland
• Katrina Mullan, University of California, Berkeley
• Shahid Naeem, Columbia University in the City of New York
• Jennifer K. O’Leary, OneReef
• Jennie C. Stephens, Clark University
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25
IDR TEAM SUMMARY 3
IDR TEAM SUMMARY
Greg Masters, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar
University of Maryland
IDR Team 3 was asked to design social and technical capabilities to
respond to abrupt changes in ecosystem services. An abrupt change can
be truly sudden—a sharp shock to the system such as a tsunami, asteroid
impact, volcanic eruption, or earthquake—or years in the making. The
farmers who first populated the Great Plains of the United States, for
example, engaged over a number of years in agricultural practices that were
ill-suited to the environment. When the wet cycle gave way to sudden
drought in 1931, wind carried the over-plowed topsoil into great dust
clouds that blackened skies and destroyed crops. Another example of a
“slow-onset” yet abrupt change is the sudden collapse of the Northern Cod
fishery in 1992, which followed decades of overfishing.
Team 3 considered these kinds of changes in the context of ecosystem
services: the range of benefits that humans derive from the natural world.
Changes in the environment are distinct from changes in ecosystem services,
but the former generally cause or trigger the latter. The Dust Bowl, a rapid
change in the physical environment, affected food supply. Deforestation
affects timber supply, flood prevention, carbon sequestration, and nutrient
cycling. And many abrupt changes in the environment have the potential to
affect recreation, ecotourism, and the spiritual enrichment that nature can
provide. An abrupt change might affect few, several or all types of services.
The team recognized that some perturbations may actually increase
certain ecosystem services while causing a decline in others. Slash-and-burn
deforestation in tropical areas, for example, increases that land’s ability to
provide food while reducing its capacity to absorb carbon. It is important
to consider the possibility of trade-offs in ecosystem services following
abrupt changes.
Organizing and Classifying Abrupt Changes
To begin, the team found it useful to organize the range of environmental
changes that trigger abrupt changes in ecosystem services. While these
involve multiple variables, the two the team thinks most essential are spatial
scale and rate of onset. A large asteroid impact, for example, may have an
intermediate- or large-scale impact, but the onset is always fast. Slash-
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26 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
and-burn deforestation also has a fast onset but a more local impact. The
collapse of a fishery often has a slow onset and an intermediate impact. To
show these kinds of relationships, the team developed the diagram shown
in Figure 1. The abrupt changes in the diagram are color-coded to represent
the number of ecosystem services affected.
Some kinds of abrupt changes display complex interrelationships
among variables. The impact of the loss of biodiversity, for example, varies
according to spatial scale; local biodiversity loss affects only a few ecosystem
services, while global biodiversity loss may affect all of the services in the
system. Drought has a fast start (one day it stops raining) but a slow onset
because it takes days before dramatic changes occur. Also, spatial scale
and rate of onset seem to be coupled in the case of drought; the wider the
impact, the slower the rate of onset.
The team focused on three basic classes of change: outliers, state
changes, and tipping points. An ecosystem may bounce back to its original
state following a dramatic change (such as a 100-year flood) or it may
persist in a different state; these two scenarios are outliers and state changes,
Fast Asteroid impact
Flooding
Biodiversity loss
Onset*
Deforestation
Thermo-
Overfishing
haline
reorgan-
ization
Slow
Global
Local
Spatial scale
FIGURE 1: Potential abrupt changes in the environment are organized according to
their expected rate of onset, spatial scale, and number of affected ecosystem services.
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 3
respectively. The third type of abrupt change occurs when the ecosystem
passes a “tipping point” or threshold after a period of chronic stress and
repeated perturbations. After passing a tipping point, the system often
persists in the altered state. Easter Island’s civilization collapsed suddenly
when a species of palm went extinct following centuries of overharvesting.
According to climate scientists, a potential tipping point in the world’s
climate may soon be reached if enough fresh meltwater enters the North
Atlantic to shut down the thermohaline circulation, the density-dependent
ocean conveyor that provides heat to northern latitudes.
Willingness to Prepare: A Matter of Perception
The team considered the kinds of changes for which society has
demonstrated a willingness to prepare. Whether people have direct
experience with a certain change, whether the change can be predicted and
whether it can be managed are all factors the team thought to be important
in influencing willingness to prepare. Also, society sometimes shows a dis-
dis-
proportionately strong response to ecosystem disruption that causes a direct
threat to public health. The spread of novel diseases such as West Nile virus,
for example, usually inspires a significant response even when the number of
people affected is small. Another example is E. coli-contaminated spinach;
when an outbreak occurred in California’s Salinas Valley in 2006, only three
people were killed yet one of the consequences was a drastic change in food
safety policy in California.
Examples like these highlight the importance of perception in
influencing responses to abrupt changes in ecosystem services. The team
discussed the need for more human behavioral research into people’s
perceived sense of risk. One interesting question is whether abrupt
changes inspire overreaction while chronic changes lead to complacency.
For example, does sudden raiding of crops by elephants in Africa or Asia
inspire a stronger reaction than consumption of exposed grain stores in the
Midwestern United States by rats, even though the latter (chronic) situation
ends up costing farmers more in terms of loss of grain?
Anticipating response
The team considered several categories of preparation for an abrupt
change in an ecosystem service. Of course, one common response is to
simply accept life’s inherent risks (the “fateful” response). Putting aside
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28 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
this untroubled approach, actual preparations can broadly be labeled either
mitigation or adaptation; mitigation is working to prevent the change, while
adaptation is planning some kind of response in the event the change occurs.
Adaptive responses might be reactive—a rush of activity that addresses only
the most immediate vulnerability and the associated ecosystem service—
or active, addressing multiple ecosystem services through continuous
refinement of strategies based on lessons learned.
How vulnerable people perceive themselves to be strongly influences
the number and type of strategies they will embrace and pay for. Where
the perception of vulnerability is high, there likely will be more mitigation
strategies and more active adaptive responses. Where the perception of
vulnerability is low, one would expect to find fewer mitigation activities and
more reactive adaptive responses. If the abrupt change in question occurs,
the people who perceived their risk to be low may begin to change their
perception and shift their portfolio of strategies. The team represented these
hypothesized behavioral patterns in a flow chart, shown in Figure 2.
What Makes Societies More Robust and Resilient?
Robustness and resilience are often conflated; robustness refers to a
system’s ability to withstand change, while resilience refers to the time it
takes for the system to return to its previous state. The team considered
High and
High Low Low
widespread
mi ga on percep on of mi ga on
percep on of
ac vi es vulnerability POTENTIAL vulnerability ac vi es
ABRUPT
CHANGE
Proac ve adap ve Reac ve adap ve
response response
Prepare for several Prepare for the
op ons for most immediate
mul ple ES vulnerability and
loss of a related ES
FIGURE 2: How perception of vulnerability to a potential abrupt change might affect
mitigation activities and adaptive responses.
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IDR TEAM SUMMARY 3
factors that make societies more robust and resilient in the face of abrupt
changes, including characteristics of the abrupt changes themselves as well
as societal coping mechanisms.
Societies are more likely to prepare well for (and be less vulnerable
to) slow-onset abrupt changes (as opposed to sharp, unexpected shocks),
changes that are predictable, reversible and local-scale, changes that increase
rather than decrease ecosystem services, and changes in which technology
can replace the lost ecosystem service.
To improve robustness and resilience, societies should provide multiple
options for people to cope and adapt, and institutions should be flexible.
Societal coping mechanisms should include access to insurance, technology
for mitigation and adaptation, and the ability to diversify livelihoods so as to
decrease dependence on a single ecosystem service. Also important are social
networks, which can be considered a kind of insurance. As one person in
the team observed, many people in Japan who live in high-risk areas decided
not to move after the tsunami because they did not want to accept the risk
associated with losing their network of family and friends.
Future Research
Given the important role of perception in governing responses to
abrupt ecosystem change, future research should focus on understanding
the reasons behind human behavioral responses to abrupt changes. The
team suggests a project to build a library of case studies of past abrupt
changes and information about how people prepared or coped. Information
should be gathered on the abrupt changes themselves, including specific
ecological functions and services that underwent change, as well as the social
dimensions of the societal responses. Of interest would be the role played by
social networks, information systems and governmental institutions, as well
as the livelihood practices of people affected—whether, for example, farmers
used multicropping or other means of biological insurance to reduce risk.
The team also noted the need for research concerning the relationships
between specific ecological functions and ecosystem services they provide;
this knowledge can help in the monitoring of service changes.
Lastly, the team suggests the development of specific early warning
systems—including ecological indicators of tipping points—and tools that
allow people to explore the mitigation and adaptation options available to
them. A computer simulation game, for example, could serve this purpose
while also informing research on risk perception.
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