Long Term Socio-Ecological Research

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxvii

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2. Introduction

   • Simron Jit Singh, Helmut Haberl, Marian Chertow, Michael Mirtl, Martin Schmid

   Pages 1-26

3. LTSER Concepts, Methods and Linkages

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

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4. LTSER Concepts, methods and linkages

   1. Socioeconomic Metabolism and the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production: What Promise Do They Hold for LTSER?

      • Helmut Haberl, Karl-Heinz Erb, Veronika Gaube, Simone Gingrich, Simron Jit Singh

      Pages 29-52

   2. Using Integrated Models to Analyse Socio-ecological System Dynamics in Long-Term Socio-ecological Research – Austrian Experiences

      • Veronika Gaube, Helmut Haberl

      Pages 53-75

   3. Modelling Transport as a Key Constraint to Urbanisation in Pre-industrial Societies

      • Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Fridolin Krausmann, Barbara Smetschka

      Pages 77-101

   4. The Environmental History of the Danube River Basin as an Issue of Long-Term Socio-ecological Research

      • Verena Winiwarter, Martin Schmid, Severin Hohensinner, Gertrud Haidvogl

      Pages 103-122

   5. Critical Scales for Long-Term Socio-ecological Biodiversity Research

      • Thomas Dirnböck, Peter Bezák, Stefan Dullinger, Helmut Haberl, Hermann Lotze-Campen, Michael Mirtl et al.

      Pages 123-138

   6. Human Biohistory

      • Stephen Boyden

      Pages 139-161

   7. Geographic Approaches to LTSER: Principal Themes and Concepts with a Case Study of Andes-Amazon Watersheds

      • Karl S. Zimmerer

      Pages 163-187

   8. The Contribution of Anthropology to Concepts Guiding LTSER Research

      • Ted L Gragson

      Pages 189-214

5. LTSER Applications Across Ecosystems, Time and Space

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 215-215

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6. LTSER Applications across ecosystems, time and space

   1. Viewing the Urban Socio-ecological System Through a Sustainability Lens: Lessons and Prospects from the Central Arizona–Phoenix LTER Programme

      • Nancy B. Grimm, Charles L. Redman, Christopher G. Boone, Daniel L. Childers, Sharon L. Harlan, B. L. Turner II

      Pages 217-246

   2. A City and Its Hinterland: Vienna’s Energy Metabolism 1800–2006

      • Fridolin Krausmann

      Pages 247-268

   3. Sustaining Agricultural Systems in the Old and New Worlds: A Long-Term Socio-Ecological Comparison

      • Geoff Cunfer, Fridolin Krausmann

      Pages 269-296

   4. How Material and Energy Flows Change Socio-natural Arrangements: The Transformation of Agriculture in the Eisenwurzen Region, 1860–2000

      • Simone Gingrich, Martin Schmid, Markus Gradwohl, Fridolin Krausmann

      Pages 297-313

   5. The Intimacy of Human-Nature Interactions on Islands

      • Marian Chertow, Ezekiel Fugate, Weslynne Ashton

      Pages 315-337

   6. Global Socio-metabolic Transitions

      • Fridolin Krausmann, Marina Fischer-Kowalski

      Pages 339-365

7. LTSER Formations and the Transdisciplinary Challenge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 367-367

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8. LTSER Formations and the transdisciplinary challenge

   1. Building an Urban LTSER: The Case of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study and the D.C./B.C. ULTRA-Ex Project

      • J. Morgan Grove, Steward T. A. Pickett, Ali Whitmer, Mary L. Cadenasso

      Pages 369-408

The authors in this volume make a case for LTSER’s potential in providing insights, knowledge and experience necessary for a sustainability transition. This expertly edited selection of contributions from Europe and North America reviews the development of LTSER since its inception and assesses its current state, which has evolved to recognize the value of formulating solutions to the host of ecological threats we face. Through many case studies, this book gives the reader a greater sense of where we are and what still needs to be done to engage in and make meaning from long-term, place-based and cross-disciplinary engagements with socio-ecological systems.

• LTSER
• Long term socio-ecological research
• nature interactions
• society and nature interactions
• sustainable development

• University of Klagenfurt, Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies (I, Institute of Social Ecology, Vienna, Austria

  Simron Jit Singh, Helmut Haberl, Martin Schmid

• Yale University, Yale School of Forestry and Environmenta, Center for Industrial Ecology, New Haven, USA

  Marian Chertow

• , Ecosystem Research and Monitoring, Federal Environment Agency, Vienna, Austria

  Michael Mirtl

Over the last half century, exceptional changes in the natural environment attributed to human activities have placed renewed importance on the study of society-nature interactions. Around the globe, ever increasing human demands on ecosystems not only harm the environment, but also induce great potential for social conflict. In this sense sustainability problems are not only “ecological” but also “socio-ecological” since the ways societies interact with the environment affects both ecosystems and social systems.

The emerging interdisciplinary field of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) is primarily concerned with questions of global environmental change and sustainability. It aims to conceptualise, observe, analyse, and model changes in coupled socio-ecological (or human-environment) systems over one to several generations. Tracking these dynamics and changes in socio-ecological systems over extended periods is accomplished in research traditions that include social and human ecology, industrial ecology, environmental history, human geography and anthropology. In recognising research that takes a long-term perspective on society–nature interactions, conceptually and empirically, as well as approaches that engage society in this quest, LTSER aims to provide a knowledge base that helps reorient socio-economic trajectories towards more sustainable pathways.

The authors in this volume make a case for LTSER’s potential in providing insights, knowledge and experience necessary for a sustainability transition. This expertly edited selection of contributions from Europe and North America reviews the development of LTSER since its inception and assesses its current state, which has evolved to recognize the value of formulating solutions to the host of ecological threats we face. Through many case studies, this book gives the reader a greater sense of where we are and what still needs to be done to engage in and make meaning fromlong-term, place-based and cross-disciplinary engagements with socio-ecological systems.

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