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Protected areas as social‐ecological systems: perspectives from resilience and social‐ecological systems theory
Author(s) -
Cumming Graeme S.,
Allen Craig R.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
ecological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.864
H-Index - 213
eISSN - 1939-5582
pISSN - 1051-0761
DOI - 10.1002/eap.1584
Subject(s) - ecological resilience , cognitive reframing , ecological systems theory , environmental resource management , ecology , sustainability , context (archaeology) , psychological resilience , resilience (materials science) , natural resource management , protected area , socio ecological system , ecosystem services , social ecology , ecosystem health , ecosystem management , adaptive management , geography , natural resource , resource (disambiguation) , ecosystem , political science , biology , environmental science , psychology , computer science , law , psychotherapist , computer network , archaeology , social psychology , thermodynamics , physics
Conservation biology and applied ecology increasingly recognize that natural resource management is both an outcome and a driver of social, economic, and ecological dynamics. Protected areas offer a fundamental approach to conserving ecosystems, but they are also social‐ecological systems whose ecological management and sustainability are heavily influenced by people. This editorial, and the papers in the invited feature that it introduces, discuss three emerging themes in social‐ecological systems approaches to understanding protected areas: (1) the resilience and sustainability of protected areas, including analyses of their internal dynamics, their effectiveness, and the resilience of the landscapes within which they occur; (2) the relevance of spatial context and scale for protected areas, including such factors as geographic connectivity, context, exchanges between protected areas and their surrounding landscapes, and scale dependency in the provision of ecosystem services; and (3) efforts to reframe what protected areas are and how they both define and are defined by the relationships of people and nature. These emerging themes have the potential to transform management and policy approaches for protected areas and have important implications for conservation, in both theory and practice.