TY - JOUR
T1 - An empirical model of the Baltic Sea reveals the importance of social dynamics for ecological regime shifts
AU - Lade, Steven J.
AU - Niiranen, Susa
AU - Hentati-Sundberg, Jonas
AU - Blenckner, Thorsten
AU - Boonstra, Wiebren J.
AU - Orach, Kirill
AU - Quaas, Martin F.
AU - Österblom, Henrik
AU - Schlüter, Maja
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/9/1
Y1 - 2015/9/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Feedback analysis
KW - Fisheries
KW - Generalized modeling
KW - Human decision making
KW - Social-ecological systems
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940975506&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1504954112
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1504954112
M3 - Article
C2 - 26283344
AN - SCOPUS:84940975506
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 112
SP - 11120
EP - 11125
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 35
ER -