Linking social and ecological systems : management practices and social mechanisms for building resilience /

Written by a preponderance of physical scientists, essays in this volume advocate an interdisciplinary approach to resource management. Every chapter employs a common, analytical framework requiring that social and ecological systems be examined as one system rather than as separate systems. Diverging from the classic utilitarian approach to resource management, the framework integrates two streams of thought: systems analysis emphasizing linkages and feedback controls and a social science of resource management focusing on the resource user rather than the resource itself. Contributors provide international, interdisciplinary case studies of selected ecosystems to investigate how resource management can be sustainable. Cases range from northern coastal systems and arid lands to mountain ecosystems and tropical rainforests. They examine learning from locally devised systems, emergence of resource management adaptations, both successes and failures in regional systems, new approaches to resource management, and suggestions for sustainable ecosystem management. Chapter references. Useful for undergraduate and graduate students in environmental studies, environmental economics, and environmental sociology. S. Cable University of Tennessee at Knoxville