Supplemental readings from the Reader

Lüdeke, M. K. B., G. Petschel-Held, and H. J. Schellnhuber. 2004. Syndromes of global change: The first panoramic view. GAIA 13(1):42-49.

1.4.2.2 HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS: Realistically sketched interactions-Syndromes A more abstract but realistic sketch is based on identifying complexes of non-sustainable processes, symptomatic of failing human-environment systems, and characteristic of either multiple places in different regions or of larger regions. Realism is provided by decomposing the dynamics of human use of nature with underlying natural processes. Analogous to medical practice with syndromes as a collection of symptoms indicative of sickness, the Reading describes some 16 identified syndromes of unsustainable global environmental and social change.

Schaldach, R, and J. A. Priess. 2008. Integrated models of the land system: A review of modeling approaches on the regional to global scale. Living Reviews in Landscape Research 2, 1. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrlr-2008-1.

2.4.4.1 INTEGRATIVE METHODS AND MODELS: Observations, Indicators and Monitoring – Structure These sustainability models try to detail or reproduce the essential structure and functions of the human-environment system under study. In general they contain at least three basic elements: a human sub-system, an environment sub-system and the interactions, links, and feedbacks between them. Designers of such models often struggle between the desire to provide detail sufficient to capture the verisimilitude of the real world and the need to simplify sufficient to make the model both operational and understandable. The Reading illustrates these with eight recent models of the “land system” at various spatial scales. All contain human and the environment sub-systems and these are linked by the effects of changing land-use patterns on environmental factors and processes.