Coupled Human and Natural Systems

One potential pathway towards sustainability involves reducing the level of anthropogenic carbon emissions per unit of human well-being, also known as the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB). I estimate longitudinal models, which indicate that for OECD and non-OECD nations, income inequality began increasing CIWB in the 1990s, and the effect of inequality on CIWB continued to increase in magnitude through time. This suggests that reducing inequality in nations throughout the world could enhance both climate change mitigation efforts and human quality of life.

Political-economic sociologists have long investigated the dynamics and consequences of international trade. With few exceptions, this area of inquiry ignores the possible connections between trade and environmental degradation. In contrast, environmental sociologists have made several assumptions about the environmental impacts of international trade, but the assumptions lack theoretical specificity and are thus empirically underinvestigated. Bridging these two complementary areas of macrosociology, the present study proposes and tests a structural theory of unequal ecological exchange. The theory posits that more-developed countries externalize their consumption-based environmental costs to less-developed countries, which increase forms of environmental degradation within the latter. To test a key assertion of the theory, a weighted index of vertical trade is created that quantifies the relative extent to which exports are sent to more-developed countries. Using the index, cross-national panel analyses of deforestation, 1990-2000 are conducted to test the hypothesis that less-developed countries with higher levels of exports sent to more-developed countries experience greater rates of deforestation, net of other factors. Results of the analyses confirm the hypothesis, providing support for the theory of uneven ecological exchange. Additional findings correspond with other sociological studies of deforestation, particularly those that focus on the effects of rural and urban population growth as well as level of capital intensity and rate of economic development.

The human dimensions of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming attract considerable attention in macrosociology. However, cross-national analyses generally neglect greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide. The current study addresses this paucity through the testing of theoretically derived models for the social structural causes of the second largest anthropogenic contributor to global warming: methane emissions intensity. The cross-national analyses consider the effects of particular economic activities and their social organization as well as other domestic conditions and the environmental commitment of nation states. Results suggest that both the intensity and social organization of production in different sectors contribute to methane emissions per capita. In particular, the production of beef and veal, oil and natural gas, and biomass energy all positively affect methane emissions intensity. Evidence indicates that while the level of economic development and foreign direct investment in the manufacturing and petroleum sectors increases emissions, the level of state environmentalism has the opposite effect. These findings illustrate the necessity for social scientists to take more nuanced approaches when studying human-caused environmental degradation.

According to Merriam Webster Online, a statue is “a figure usually of a person or animal that is made from stone, metal, etc.; a full three dimensional representation of usually of a person, animal, or mythical being that is produced by sculpting, modeling, or casting (Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary, n.d.).” Two particular statues that have quite the historical and cultural value in art history are the Statue of Memi and Sabu as well as the Seated Statue of Gudea. We know sculptures are used for telling the stories of a society’s practices and beliefs. This ancient form of expression has been used as a prerequisite and supplement to a lot of written history and media outlets such as in modern times. In this essay, we will compare and contrast the two statues of ancient times.

This brief article considers the environmental impacts of militaries from a sociological perspective. The authors begin with an overview of treadmill of destruction theory, which highlights the expansionary tendencies and concomitant environmental consequences of militarism. This discussion is followed by a narrative assessment of military developments and expenditures, with a particular focus on the US military over the past century. Next, the authors detail the increasing environmental impacts associated with the growth and structure of militarization, and conclude by calling for future sociological research to seriously consider the environmental impacts of the world's militaries.

The recent shift towards the interdisciplinary study of the human-environment relationship is largely driven by environmental justice debates. This article will distinguish four types of environmental justice and link them to questions of neoliberalism and altruism. First, environmental justice seeks to redress inequitable distribution of environmental burdens to vulnerable groups and economically disadvantaged populations. Second, environmental justice highlights the developed and developing countries’ unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits.
Third, temporal environmental justice refers to the issues associated with intergenerational justice or concern for future generations of humans. In all three cases, environmental justice entails equitable distribution of burdens and benefits to different nations or social groups. By contrast, ecological justice involves biospheric egalitarianism or justice between species. This article will focus on ecological justice since the rights of non-human species lags behind social justice debates and discuss the implications of including biospheric egalitarianism in environmental justice debates.

This article re-examines the theoretical basis for environmental and heritage interpretation in tourist settings in the light of hermeneutic philosophy. It notes that the pioneering vision of heritage interpretation formulated by Freeman Tilden envisaged a broadly educational, ethically informed and transformative art. By contrast, current cognitive psychological attempts to reduce interpretation to the monological transmission of information, targeting universal but individuated cognitive structures, are found to be wanting. Despite growing signs of diversity, this information processing approach to interpretation remains dominant. The article then presents the alternative paradigm of hermeneutics through the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer, to provide a broader interpretation of interpretation. This not only captures the essence of Tilden's definition but construes heritage interpretation as a more inclusive, culturally situated, critically reflexive and dialogical practice.

Keywords: environmental interpretation; heritage tourism; hermeneutics; Gadamer;
Heidegger; Tilden

In response to the relatively high divorce rate of previous decades, the United States government has deemed marriage an important research topic (Fincham & Beach, 2010). Most researchers have focused on studying the deterioration of marriage, divorced couples, and marital dissatisfaction (Gottman & Notarius, 2002); unfortunately, they have not reached consensus on how to define long-term marriage. Qualitative research on happy long-term marriage is sparse and has focused on finding singular factors that explain marital success (Bachand & Caron, 2001) without considering a developmental perspective. The purpose of this study was to explore how happily married, heterosexual, long-term couples maintained happiness over time. This study used grounded theory methodology with an emergent and exploratory design (Flick, 2009). The sample consisted of ten adult heterosexual couples who self-identified as happily married, were in their first marriage, and had been married at least 30 years. Spouses were interviewed separately using a semi-structured interview guide. Nine themes emerged using the constant comparative method of analysis (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). Results suggested that happily married couples go through a healthy development process by choosing their mate wisely, creating a strong foundation before marriage, identifying the changes and stressors brought on by childrearing, protecting their marital bond, learning dyadic coping, and eventually making new meaning during the empty nesting phase of their marriages. A developmental-stress model of happy marriage was proposed, which provided detailed descriptions on how married individuals achieved their healthy couple development together at each stage. Clinical applications and theoretical implications were discussed.

In vista del seminario tenutosi all'Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici il 9 giugno a Napoli, Ecologie politiche del presente, pubblichiamo un primo testo come materiale preparatorio: si tratta della prefazione all'edizione italiana del libro Antropocene o Capitalocene. Scenari di ecologia-mondo nella crisi planetaria, scritta dallo stesso Jason W. Moore (introduzione e cura di Emanuele Leonardi e Alessandro Barbero, Ombre Corte, Verona 2017) Quello di Antropocene è diventato il concetto ambientalista più importante, ma anche più il pericoloso, del nostro tempo. La sua pericolosità sta nel fatto che proprio mentre mostra con chiarezza i "passaggi di stato" [state shifts] delle nature planetarie esso mistifica anche la loro storia (Barnosky et al. 2012). L'espressione che meglio cristallizza questo stato dell'arte è cambiamento climatico antropogenico. Naturalmente si tratta di una colossale falsificazione. Il cambiamento climatico non è il risultato dell'azione umana in astrattol'Anthropos -bensì la conseguenza più evidente di secoli di dominio del capitale. Il cambiamento climatico è capitalogenico (Street 2016).

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic framework, I suggest a way to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented.

Environmental anthropologists attempt to accommodate social justice while seeking to reconcile more-than-human relations and responsibilities towards their habitats. This article acknowledges areas of tension between local livelihoods and international conservation efforts, between indigenous peoples and wildlife, between traditional lifeways and development, and finally between different types of ethical assumptions that underlie anthropological advocacy. A number of dichotomies that are inherent in these tensions are discussed. With regard to the ecocentric/anthropocentric dichotomy, I argue that while human and environmental interests are sometimes intertwined, ecocentrism is necessary if non-humans are to be protected outside of utilitarian interests. With regard to the ‘neoliberal conservation/local communities’ dichotomy, I argue that blaming conservation for the violation of social justice depoliticises the issue of ecological injustice. Through a critical discussion of these dichotomies, this article examines the role of environmental anthropology in addressing today’s pressing environmental issues, particularly the loss of biodiversity, with respect to the ‘conservation’ of communities and that of protected areas

Sociology is poised to greatly enhance our collective understanding of the various sustainability challenges facing the world today. To contribute to this endeavor, the authors conduct panel analyses of the per capita ecological footprints of nations to evaluate multiple theoretical traditions within environmental sociology and its sister approaches. Findings indicate that the consumption-based environmental impacts of nations are tied to economic development, urban population, militarization, and the structure of international trade. Ecological conditions in the context of climate and biogeography also prove to partially shape the environmental harms of human activities. Ultimately, this research suggests that political-economic factors, ecological milieu, and structural associations between nations all influence society/nature relationships. Considering the globally unsustainable levels of resource consumption and concomitant increases in pollution for a growing number of nations throughout the world, the authors contend that theoretically inclusive and methodologically rigorous investigations on such topics should be more central to the discipline. 1 There are other important theoretical perspectives within or of direct relevance for environmental sociology, such as the metabolic rift (e.g., ). However, for the current study we focus on perspectives that suggest relationships more amenable for assessment through quantitative comparative analysis.

Pattern language can be used to describe transformative ways of resolving disparate forces in complex contexts, making explicit the ancient practices of holistic architectural design, creating new forms with living quality.  Discussed here are ways to use pattern language for learning from recurrent design patterns of nature.  Common patterns of naturally occurring organization and transformation are used to search in great repositories of natural design patterns, and find diverse living 


examples to learn from. For example, the familiar way designers work from early concepts to finished products is can be described as a recurrence of the natural process of complex designs developing from small beginnings to emerge in new forms. The technique of “pattern search” uses a “dual paradigm view” to separate the subjects of conceptual models and of observed natural forms, allowing attention to turn back and forth from one to the other as one studies their connections.

Abstract. This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

Demonic geography is an approach to practicing human geography that operates from the premise that there are no such immaterial entities as 'souls', 'spirits', 'minds', integrated, stable 'selves', or conscious 'free will'. This paper elaborates the theoretical framework of demonic geography by spelling out how it is different from non-representational theory and by articulating it with recent developments in experimental psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind. Counterintuitively, the paper shows that the deflationary, materialistic ontology of human nature espoused by demonic geography need not lead to meaninglessness, unhappiness, or the collapse of moral behaviour. Instead, subscribing to demonic geography opens up new ways to find meaning, to pursue happiness, and to live the good life.

Long-term modeling of agricultural land use is central in global scale assessments of climate change, food security, biodiversity, and climate adaptation and mitigation policies. We present a global-scale dynamic land use allocation model and show that it can reproduce the broad spatial features of the past 100 years of evolution of cropland and pastureland patterns. The modeling approach integrates economic theory, observed land use history, and data on both socioeconomic and biophysical determinants of land use change, and estimates relationships using long-term historical data, thereby making it suitable for long-term projections. The underlying economic motivation is maximization of expected profits by landowners within each grid cell. The model predicts fractional land use for cropland and pastureland within each grid cell based on socioeconomic and biophysical driving factors that change with time. The model explicitly incorporates the following key features: (1) land use competition, (2) spatial heterogeneity in the nature of driving factors across geographic regions, (3) spatial heterogeneity in the relative importance of driving factors and previous land use patterns in determining land use allocation, and (4) spatial and temporal autocorrelation in land use patterns.

We show that land use allocation approaches based solely on previous land use history (but disregarding the impact of driving factors), or those accounting for both land use history and driving factors by mechanistically fitting models for the spatial processes of land use change do not reproduce well long-term historical land use patterns. With an example application to the terrestrial carbon cycle, we show that such inaccuracies in land use allocation can translate into significant implications for global environmental assessments. The modeling approach and its evaluation provide an example that can be useful to the land use, Integrated Assessment, and the Earth system modeling communities.

The circumstances that have given rise to the Anthropocene concept require that we reassess our assumptions about human agency and human effects on the earth system. Human activities, and thus human choices, clearly lie at the root of the great environmental predicament of our age, which is not primarily an ecological crisis, though its ramifications are far reaching within ecological systems. Rather, it is a crisis of culture. If the humanities "are a unique repository of knowledge and insight into the rich diversity of the human experience" from which we learn to make sense of our "responses, motivations and actions" in the face of challenges, then it is risky to omit humanities knowledge from scientific assessment and consultation processes informing environmental policy.

The complete article is available for free viewing on the Future Earth site: bit.ly/1QoHPeC .

Despite an increasing recognition that human activity is currently the dominant force modifying landscapes, and that this activity has been increasing through the Holocene, there has been little integrative work to evaluate human interactions with geomorphic processes. We argue that agent-based models (ABMs) are a useful tool for overcoming the limitations of existing, highly empirical approaches. In particular, they allow the integration of decision-making into process-based models and provide a heuristic way of evaluating the compatibility of knowledge gained from a wide range of sources, both within and outwith the discipline of geomorphology. The application of ABMs to geomorphology is demonstrated from two different perspectives. The SPASIMv1 (Special Protection Area SIMulator version 1) model is used to evaluate the potential impacts of land-use change – particularly in relation to wildfire and subsequent soil conditions, runoff and erosion – over a decadal timescale from the present day to the mid-twenty-first century. It focuses on the representation of farmers with traditional versus commercial perspectives in central Spain, and highlights the importance of land-tenure structure and historical contingencies of individuals' decision-making. CYBEROSION, however, considers changes in erosion and deposition over the scale of at least centuries. It represents both wild and domesticated animals and humans as model agents, and investigates the interactions of them in the context of early agriculturalists in southern France in a prehistoric context. We evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the ABM approach, and consider some of the major challenges. These challenges include potential process-scale mismatches, differences in perspective between investigators from different disciplines, and issues regarding model evaluation, analysis and interpretation. If the challenges can be overcome, this fully integrated approach will provide geomorphology a means to conceptualize soundly the study of human–landscape interactions by bridging the gap between social and physical approaches.

A partir deste relatório acadêmico são apresentadas considerações acerca de
um estudo da compostagem como objeto de pesquisa na perspectiva do Design
de Produto. A visão adquirida da investigação delineada conceitualmente na
intersecção entre Sistemas Artificiais e Domínios Naturais, demanda uma
compreensão complexa acerca das possibilidades em âmbito prático e teórico
imbricados no estudo da compostagem como um processo. Tal visão resulta em
um problema de pesquisa que investiga o processo de compostagem como
fonte de inspiração para o desenvolvimento de projetos a partir de uma
fundamentação teórica voltada ao assunto, abrangendo a relação complementar
entre o problema de pesquisa no quadro dos Domínios Naturais, e
desenvolvimento de simulações no quadro dos Sistemas Aritificiais. Do ponto de
vista metodológico, tal recorte possibilita a visita da pesquisa em áreas como:
conhecimento aplicado em projeto, tais quais desenho paramétrico, modelagem
conceitual e modelagem em Sistemas Artificiais, Simulação, Embriogênese,
Bioinformática e Domínios Naturais. A relação entre problema e solução
compreendidos no controle da compostagem a partir do comportamento térmico,
é proposta como estruturação em coesão com todas as áreas pesquisadas,
utilizando um controle com aspectos particulares. Sendo assim, o estudo de uma
simulação para a geração de requisitos de projetação no campo da
compostagem, delineado e codificado em operações do Design, é proposto de
maneira a fomentar a realização de projetos com robustez informacional acerca
do assunto. Os resultados obtidos geram um experimento com considerações
coniventes com a realização da atividade, bem como para os campos de estudo
visitados, em uma avaliação com critérios atrelados a área da Pesquisa em
Design. Como resultado da investigação realizada em um escopo de trabalho
marcado pela permanente necessidade de avaliar e confirmar as teorias
propostas, são gerados modelos conceituais e artificiais para a aquisição de uma
compreensão global de simulação do processo de compostagem. Desta forma,
são sinalizado indícios de sua viabilidade para aquisição de benefícios coesos
com o campo da Sustentabilidade.

In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) announced an unprecedented dangerous decline in biodiversity, one of the planetary limits that are currently being surpassed. The results and trends of socio–ecosystemic problems oblige us to attempt to understand and address the global crisis. Socio–ecosystemic problems are not only ethical and moral challenges but also ones of interest and security, since the financial resources available will be insufficient for people immersed in a sick and dysfunctional society. In this sense, science plays a central role in offering alternatives. This work is a theoretical construction, based on complexity and transdiscipline, that aims to offer these alternatives. It is enriched by several areas of knowledge, with the objective of broadening the interpretation of sustainability and overcoming some of the limitations of existing approaches through the recognition of the objec...

This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

Nutrition, food systems, and the biodiversity of food and agriculture (agrobiodiversity) are rapidly changing among indigenous smallholders in the Andean countries, across Latin Amer-ica, and globally. Urgent calls for food sovereignty recognize global transformations of nutrition , food systems, agriculture, and climate change amid geographically uneven development and vulnerability to these shocks that recently include the coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic. Collaborating with a praxis-oriented institution focused on social nutrition and public health in Peru, we conducted mixed-method research on landscape and livelihood transformations among indigenous smallholders in the Huánuco region. Our approach utilizes place-and region-based research that integrates a relational framework of emergent agrobiodiversity interactions with a model of coupling/de-coupling in production-consumption linkages. Conceptual insights and empirical results demonstrate varied but widespread food and nutrition insecurity, moderate agrobiodiversity, and innovative agrobiodiverse maize fields and home gardens. Part-time farming and predominant purchased food are dual pillars amid precarious livelihoods and land use that condition food sovereignty prospects. Cultural affect strongly influences emergent agrobiodiversity utilized in food consumption through relations of gender and intersectional social factors. Global transformations fuel the substantial albeit partial decline of agrobiodiversity. Emergent agrobiodiversity in food-growing spaces can
enhance nutrition security and food sovereignty, lessen vulnerability, and strengthen agroecological
adaptive capacity and resilience.

The Seixe River Basin (SRB) in southwestern Portugal is located within the Southern Portugal Green Belt covering 254 km2 in an area recognised for its high biodiversity. The SRB, therefore, has several overlapping Nature Conservation Instruments: the Natura 2000 sites of Costa Sudoeste and Monchique, the Nature Park of Southwestern Alentejo and the Vicentina Coast, an 'Important Bird and Biodiversity Area' and it is partly covered by the National Ecological Reserve. Located within the regions of Algarve and Alentejo, and contained within three municipalities (Aljezur, Monchique and Odemira) the SRB has around 91% of the area under high level protection for its habitats, flora and fauna. In addition, due to its morphology and climate conditions the area may be recognised as a climate refuge. However, monoculture plantations (mostly eucalyptus, and some pine), along with other (past and present) agricultural practices have resulted in the systematic removal of much of the area's natural vegetation. Consequently, the theoretical rhetoric of sustainability is not being realised in practice. Instead, it is being undermined by either economically-driven land-use activities or by land abandonment, resulting in cumulative long-term ecological and social impacts. These include extensive soil erosion, deregulation of the water cycle, land abandonment and landscape degradation, all ultimately leading to high future economic costs for the SRB; costs associated with land restoration and climate change adaptation. Infused with these impacts, particularly in Portugal, are the issues of private land ownership, around 98%, which means low state land ownership. In addition, decision-making regarding management of river basins and landscapes remains sectoral and regionally divided. The question is, how to reconcile economic development with social and ecological resilience, when current economic activities act as direct driving factors enhancing the wicked problems of land degradation and climate change. The TerraSeixe Project (TSP) was created by an initiative between two environmental NGOs that has as its aim the introduction of environmental stewardship as the process for identifying and deciding approaches for protecting biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services within the SRB. To achieve this aim, remediation, adaptation, management and governance approaches to land uses need to be integrated and transdisciplinary, leading to transformational (systemic) changes over the long-term. Methodologies for this purpose, based on studies still to be conducted, will be decided by a strategic partnership platform incorporating the three municipalities concerned, four universities, a local development NGO and the national nature conservation authority. As stakeholders, the mosaic of landowners within the SRB are to be included in public participation processes for identifying integrated approaches for dealing with landscape degradation and climate change, while at the same time considering the need to maintain long-term sustainable socioeconomic activities. Partnerships between land owners and business are being developed and, what is particularly promising so far, is the opportunity for ecological restoration, ecotourism development and agroecologically-based sustainable practices to produce local products all aimed at developing multifunctional landscapes, by taking theory to practice.

Being within awareness as awareness and being with another who is within awareness is a most powerful skillful means to bring forth awareness within one's self and within each other. Two awarenesses are better than one, just as self regulation can be enhanced by co self regulation on the bodily dimension. Self-illumination is a co-emergent process between and within companions, compassionate companions. The lucidity within one's own awareness, as one's own awareness can experience the lucidity within the other's awareness as lucidity. It is true, awareness awakens awareness both in one's self and in the other. This is the secret of the tantra. The luminous energy within one's own body can resonate to the luminous energy in the other's body, deepening the mutual embodiment of light. Light is awareness and awareness is light. The attunement to awareness within one's own body can bring forth the attunement of awareness within the body of the other. The self arising of the awareness field in one's self resonates to the self arising of awareness within the other's body. The self arising of the energy or the chi or the shakti can bring forth the self arising within each other and can bring forth the sustaining of the energy field within each other. In essence, humanness is the manifestation of light, and the manifestation of primordial luminous energy, and the openness of the great space of compassion.

Despite growing interest and investment in ecosystem services across global science and policy arenas, it remains unclear how ecosystem services -and particularly changes in those services -should be measured. The social and ecological factors, and their interactions, that create and alter ecosystem services are inherently complex. Measuring and managing ecosystem services requires a sophisticated systems-based approach that accounts for how these services are generated by interconnected social-ecological systems (SES), how different services interact with each other, and how changes in the total bundle of services influence human well-being (HWB). Furthermore, there is a need to understand how changes in HWB feedback and affect the generation of ecosystem services. Here, we outline an SES-based approach for measuring ecosystem services and explore its value for setting policy targets, developing indicators, and establishing monitoring and assessment programs.

The presentation traces the recent establishment and development of the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES). Having arisen initially out of the kindred, though largely distinct, scholarly discourses of ecocriticism and environmental history, the network soon developed a model of cross-cutting research cooperation spanning a wider and more heterogeneous constellation of subject areas, scholarly discourses and scientific domains. Responding to a widely perceived need for a more fully interdisciplinary field of environmental studies in the humanities, NIES has also become a meaningful vehicle for the organization of the environmental humanities in Northern Europe (the Nordic countries in particular). The network offers one noteworthy model for the further development of this emergent field in its emphasis on project-driven and increasingly team-organized collaborative research, as well as in its ambitions to promote the equitable engagement of scholars from the arts and humanities together with scientists from the social sciences and the natural sciences in the production of new knowledge pertaining to environment and society.  NIES’s distinctly integrative form of engagement in new initiatives of research, education and public outreach has been described, perhaps most aptly, as a _post-disciplinary_ approach to environmental studies.

Pareja y familia son dos realidades vinculares íntimamente relacionadas, pero cada vez resulta más importante verlas y considerarlas de manera independiente. Si bien la familia es nuestra primer experiencia sistémica y que, de funcionar de manera más o menos adecuada, nos permite experimentar la realidad del nosotros y de la pertenencia a una realidad que trasciende nuestro yo individual, la pareja constituye nuestro primer vínculo con proyección de futuro que elegimos, o al menos deberíamos elegir.
En este artículo pretendo abordar lo que ocurre una vez que los hijos abandonan el nido y la importancia del cultivo del vínculo de pareja durante toda su vida relacional.

Despite growing interest and investment in ecosystem services across global science and policy arenas, it remains unclear how ecosystem services -and particularly changes in those services -should be measured. The social and ecological factors, and their interactions, that create and alter ecosystem services are inherently complex. Measuring and managing ecosystem services requires a sophisticated systems-based approach that accounts for how these services are generated by interconnected social-ecological systems (SES), how different services interact with each other, and how changes in the total bundle of services influence human well-being (HWB). Furthermore, there is a need to understand how changes in HWB feedback and affect the generation of ecosystem services. Here, we outline an SES-based approach for measuring ecosystem services and explore its value for setting policy targets, developing indicators, and establishing monitoring and assessment programs.

Bridging multiple areas of sociology, the author tests hypotheses derived from foreign investment dependence theory, ecologically unequal exchange theory and world society theory in analyses of industrial organic water pollution in less-developed countries, 1980-2000. Using panel data from a variety of sources, the author proposes three hypotheses: (1) industrial organic water pollution intensity is positively associated with foreign investment in manufacturing; (2) industrial organic water pollution intensity is positively associated with overall export intensity; and (3) industrial organic water pollution intensity is negatively associated with the presence of environmental international non-governmental organizations. Further analyses investigate the impact of organic water pollution on infant mortality rates in less-developed countries. In general, findings for Prais-Winsten regression analyses with panelcorrected standard errors and generalized least squares panel regression analyses of less-developed countries confirm the tested hypotheses, and indicate that industrial organic water pollution intensity does indeed contribute to infant mortality, net of the effects of economic development, fertility rates, health expenditures and other relevant factors.

Both paleoenvironmental and archaeological data provide mounting evidence of increasing aridification in the Near East starting with the late Early Bronze Age (ca. 4,300 BP). Combining the methods of the Macrophysical Climate Model (MCM) and GIS, it is possible to obtain quantifiable values across landscapes at 100-year resolution. This research focuses on the methods of MCM, a synoptic paleoclimate model that applies statistical downscaling and compares the results with proxy data. The discussion addresses the divergent trends in precipitation and temperature in eastern Anatolia between 6,000–3,200 BP. The general climatic trends emerging from this research are then compared with those illustrated in various proxy data to verify the accuracy of the retrodictions for precipitation and temperature variables of the MCM. Results of this research are important as they may be integrated with the agent-based land use and landscape evolution models. These new approaches have great potential to demonstrate how multifaceted, long-term dynamic human-environment relationships can be defined and readapted according to the changing levels of social organization, which start a new cycle of social and economic responses with each ecological change.

This paper analyses the interdependence between environment and society in terms of socio-ecological webs, in which human and biophysical systems are linked. A quantitative model, based on canonical correlation analysis applied in Fuerteventura Island (Canary Archipelago), detected indicators of human– landscape relationships and predicted potential shifts based on simulated environmental changes. In the last few decades, the landscape of Fuerteventura Island has changed: natural components and cultural agrarian uses have decreased, while the population has increased due to immigration, mainly from mainland Spain and other European countries. The island shows a transition from a coupled local socio-ecosystem to one based on the interaction between environment and coastal tourism that decouples native inhabitants from the landscape and traditional land-use practices. As vulnerability and adaptation to climate change represent critical sets of potential interactions in Canary Islands, a model and a map of the socio-ecological system under four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios show rural decoupling through 'deagrarianization' and 'deruralization', as well as stronger links to the tourism system.

This study examines the regional and temporal differences in the statistical relationship between national-level carbon dioxide emissions and national-level population size. The authors analyze panel data from 1960 to 2005 for a diverse sample of nations, and employ descriptive statistics and rigorous panel regression modeling techniques. Initial descriptive analyses indicate that all regions experienced overall increases in carbon emissions and population size during the 45-year period of investigation, but with notable differences. For carbon emissions, the sample of countries in Asia experienced the largest percent increase, followed by countries in Latin America, Africa, and lastly the sample of relatively affluent countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania combined. For population size, the sample of countries in Africa experienced the largest percent increase, followed countries in Latin America, Asia, and the combined sample of countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania. Findings for two-way fixed effects panel regression elasticity models of national-level carbon emissions indicate that the estimated elasticity coefficient for population size is much smaller for nations in Africa than for nations in other regions of the world. Regarding potential temporal changes, from 1960 to 2005 the estimated elasticity coefficient for population size decreased by 25% for the sample of Africa countries, 14% for the sample of Asia countries, 6.5% for the sample of Latin America countries, but remained the same in size for the sample of countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania. Overall, while population size continues to be the primary driver of total national-level anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, the findings for this study highlight the need for future research and policies to recognize that the actual impacts of population size on national-level carbon emissions differ across both time and region.

Earth’s land cover has been extensively transformed over time due to both human activities and natural causes. Previous global studies have focused on developing spatial and temporal patterns of dominant human land-use activities (e.g., cropland, pastureland, urban land, wood harvest). Process-based modeling studies adopt different strategies to estimate the changes in land cover by using these land-use data sets in combination with a potential vegetation map, and subsequently use this information for impact assessments. However, due to unaccounted changes in land cover (resulting from both indirect anthropogenic and natural causes), heterogeneity in land-use/cover (LUC) conversions among grid cells, even for the same land use activity, and uncertainty associated with potential vegetation mapping and historical estimates of human land use result in land cover estimates that are substantially different compared to results acquired from remote sensing observations. Here, we present a method to implicitly account for the differences arising from these uncertainties in order to provide historical estimates of land cover that are consistent with satellite estimates for recent years. Due to uncertainty in historical agricultural land use, we use three widely accepted global estimates of cropland and pastureland in combination with common wood harvest and urban land data sets to generate three distinct estimates of historical land-cover change and underlying LUC conversions. Hence, these distinct historical reconstructions offer a wide range of plausible regional estimates of uncertainty and the extent to which different ecosystems have undergone changes. The annual land cover maps and LUC conversion maps are reported at 0.5° 0.5° resolution and describe the area of 28 land- cover types and respective underlying land-use transitions. The reconstructed data sets are relevant for studies addressing the impact of land-cover change on biogeo- physics, biogeochemistry, water cycle, and global climate.

The data can be downloaded from: http://www.atmos.illinois.edu/~meiyapp2/datasets.htm

The historic landscapes and events in Kano city are amply reported in classical and contemporary academic literature. As evidence of their significance and global recognition, 'Ancient Kano City Walls and Associated Sites' have been on the UNESCO world heritage tentative lists since 2007. Kano has also recently joined group of nine great cities that form Green Pilgrimage Network in recognition of one of its numerous cultural events. However, there has been disconnection between monuments, events, arts, conservation, governance, economy, institutions, people and the city's landscapes. This paper proposes a new model to fill the gaps and facilitate implementation of UNESCO's Recommendations on Historic Urban Landscape (HUL). The model is designed based on integration of Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS), DPSIR – Driving Forces-Pressure-State-Impact-Response; Geospatial data, old and recent pictures, and social media. Implementation of this model depends on seven mapping and analysis clusters. The clusters are: urban morphology change detection, ecological and archaeological sites mapping, economic potentials mapping, HUL vulnerability mapping; institutions function mapping; and landscapes narratives. This model promises an integrated mapping of wide range of socio-economic and ecological issues covering past and current state of historic urban landscapes in Kano city. Mapping HUL for sustainable development is premised on integrated approach, and consensus building between stakeholders who define terms and meanings of every historic event or space. The model guides towards creating economic functions around historic spaces is the shortest way to improving a historical sites conservation status. Similarly, we observe that for implementation of UNESCO recommendations on HUL, it is important to make reference to old images, classical literature and oral narratives of the local society. The model creates a closed loop system that gives joint tasks to all stakeholders – policymakers, investors, conservationists, civil society groups, international development partners – to achieve sustainable HUL in Kano city and similar Sub-Saharan African cities.

THE CONSERVATION OF HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE, At Stanford Archaeology Center, Stanford University