Lade, Steven J., Niiranen, Susa, Hentati-Sundberg, Jonas, Blenckner, Thorsten, Boonstra, Wiebren J., Orach, Kirill, Quaas, Martin, Oesterblom, Henrik and Schlueter, Maja (2015) An empirical model of the Baltic Sea reveals the importance of social dynamics for ecological regime shifts. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112 (35). pp. 11120-11125. DOI 10.1073/pnas.1504954112.

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Abstract

Regime shifts triggered by human activities and environmental changes have led to significant ecological and socioeconomic consequences in marine and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Ecological processes and feedbacks associated with regime shifts have received considerable attention, but human individual and collective behavior is rarely treated as an integrated component of such shifts. Here, we used generalized modeling to develop a coupled social-ecological model that integrated rich social and ecological data to investigate the role of social dynamics in the 1980s Baltic Sea cod boom and collapse. We showed that psychological, economic, and regulatory aspects of fisher decision making, in addition to ecological interactions, contributed both to the temporary persistence of the cod boom and to its subsequent collapse. These features of the social-ecological system also would have limited the effectiveness of stronger fishery regulations. Our results provide quantitative, empirical evidence that incorporating social dynamics into models of natural resources is critical for understanding how resources can be managed sustainably. We also show that generalized modeling, which is well-suited to collaborative model development and does not require detailed specification of causal relationships between system variables, can help tackle the complexities involved in creating and analyzing social-ecological models.

Document Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Times Cited: 1
Keywords:	social–ecological systems, fisheries, generalized modeling, human decision making, feedback analysis
Research affiliation:	OceanRep > The Future Ocean - Cluster of Excellence > FO-R03 Kiel University Kiel University > Kiel Marine Science OceanRep > The Future Ocean - Cluster of Excellence
Refereed:	Yes
Open Access Journal?:	No
Publisher:	National Academy of Sciences
Projects:	Future Ocean
Date Deposited:	18 Oct 2016 03:46
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2019 21:07
URI:	https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/32564

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