Bloc Libre

titre

Bloc Libre

texte

Social-ecological system

Past, present and future trajectories of the Mediterranean forests cannot be understood without integrating ecological and anthropogenic processes in a unique social-ecological system, a concept that emerged in the 1980's and formalized by Ostrom (2009)[1]. Furthermore, facing uncertainty in the context of global change, which is not merely a shift from one state to another but rather a change in the intensity and regime of disturbances, requires to better understand the mechanisms driving the response of the system. INFORMED develops a process-based approach of the resilience of Mediterranean forests by considering an integrated social-ecological system where management, ecological processes and socio-economic processes interact as shown in the Figure below. Climate change, land-use change and new demands on ecosystem services act on the system as new disturbance factors or modify previous disturbance regime, which will simultaneously impact the different compartments of the system.

[1] Ostrom, 2009, Science 325:419-422