Priority Topic 1
LINKING SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS IN THE COASTAL ZONE
The objective of the topic is to gain insights on the likely future state of the marine environment in various economic and social scenarios.The ecosystem approach (underlying ‘ecosystem based management’) regards humans to be an integral part of current natural systems. There are large numbers of deterministic and stochastic models that examine various facets of the natural environment, and similarly large numbers of models dealing with human social systems. However, there have been very few attempts to couple them together into a single socio-ecological system that consider the system to consist of an assemblage of interdependent forms – including humans – and their non-living habitats and resource base, the integrity of which is highly dependent upon human decisions.
| Work within this topic | aims to focus on: | |
| (1) | Conceptual modeling | LOICZ will explore how models can incorporate dynamic interpretations of data and source empirical data to populate models. |
| (2) | Quantitative models | Mechanistic or stochastic models operate at various different scales and levels of complexity and this topic will explore how scale affects system properties requirements for data as well as mixed methodology approaches to accommodate the entire scale of systems. |
| (3) | Scenario-building and decision support models | One of the most exciting challenges for system models is to gain insights on the likely future state of the marine environment through their application in various economic and social scenarios. |
