English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Managing complex social-ecological systems in an era of rapid climate change and changing human pressures represents amajor challenge in sustainability science. The SierraNevada, USA is a large social-ecological system facing a tipping point that could result inmajor ecosystem changes. A century offire suppression and climate change have set the stage formega-disturbances that threaten biodiversity, human life and values, ecosystem services, and forest persistence. Stakeholders face multidimensional and often contentious trade-offs with costs and benefits that can bemismatched in space and time. If compromises cannot be reached, the status quo is likely to continue, resulting in the conversion of large portions of a 100 000 km predominatelymixed-conifer forest ecosystem to a chaparral-dominated ecosystem.We describe the outcomes of a continuation of the ecological status quo on biodiversity, cultural history, firemanagement, recreational value, and climate control, including indirect effects onwater and food security and recreation. The social-ecological ramifications of such a future are undesirable formost stakeholders. Therefore, we contend that forest management conflicts should be framed in terms of the cost of failure of negotiations among stakeholders. Specifically, negotiationsmay benefit from (1) stakeholders quantifying their definitions of success and failure, (2) quantification of trade-offs and recognition of theirmultidimensionality, and (3) allowing for solutions that are heterogeneous in space and time. This approachmay help stakeholders navigate thewicked problemofmanaging SierraNevada forests and other complex social-ecological systems. Sustainable use of natural resources is predicated on management that recognizes the fundamental interconnectedness of ‘human’ and ‘natural’ systems as a cohesive social-ecological system (Berkes and Folke 2000). Rapidly growing human populations have increased demand for a wide range of ecosystem services, so improving the sustainability of society’s use of these services has become a central goal in the management of social-ecological systems (Clark and Dickson 2003, Rodríguez et al 2006, Wu 2013). However, the difficulty of identifying salient ecosystem services and stakeholders (Rodríguez et al 2006), the role of climate change in altering ecosystem function (Mooney et al 2009), and the large spatial scale (Wu 2013) and complexity (Liu et al 2007) of many social-ecological systems complicate the already-difficult challenge of sustainable ecosystem management (Defries andNagendra 2017). One such system is the Sierra Nevada, a complex social-ecological landscape that includes ∼100 000 km of primarily forested mountains in the US state of California (SNC 2019). Sierra Nevada forests are home to>600 000 people as well as thousands of species of plants and wildlife, many of which are endemic to the region (Murphy and Stine 2004). Via its snowpack, the Sierra Nevada provides water for nationally important agricultural production and tens of millions of people in California (Klausmeyer and Fitzgerald 2012, SNC 2019). Sierra Nevada forests also provide timber resources, cultural and recreational value, and climate control via carbon storage, among other ecosystem services (Kelsey 2019). With the OPEN ACCESS

Framing management of social-ecological systems in terms of the cost of failure: the Sierra Nevada, USA as a case study