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Abstract:
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"Social-ecological systems exhibit patterns across multiple levels along
spatial, temporal, and functional scales. The outcomes that are produced in these
systems result from complex, non-additive interactions between different types of
social and biophysical components, some of which are common to many systems,
and some of which are relatively unique to a particular system. These properties,
along with the mostly non-experimental nature of the analysis, make it difficult
to construct theories regarding the sustainability of social-ecological systems.
This paper builds on previous work that has initiated a diagnostic approach to the
analysis of these systems. The process of diagnosis involves asking a series of
questions of a system at increasing levels of specificity based on the answers to
previous questions. The answer to each question further unpacks the complexity
of a system, allowing an analyst to explore patterns of interactions that produce
outcomes. An important feature of this approach is the use of multilevel analysis.
This paper explores this concept and introduces another multilevel causation
to further develop the diagnostic approach. It demonstrates that these concepts
can be used to analyze a diversity of environmental problems."
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