Book Description Review Quotes Contents
Book Description

After a decades-long economic slump, the city of Flint, Michigan, struggled to address chronic issues of toxic water supply, malnutrition, and food security gaps among its residents. A community-engaged research project proposed a resilience assessment that would use panarchy theory to move the city toward a more sustainable food system. Flint is one of many examples that demonstrates how panarchy theory is being applied to understand and influence change in complex human-natural systems. Applied Panarchy, the much-anticipated successor to Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling’s seminal 2002 volume Panarchy, documents the extraordinary advances in interdisciplinary panarchy scholarship and applications over the past two decades. Panarchy theory has been applied to a broad range of fields, from economics to law to urban planning, changing the practice of environmental stewardship for the better in measurable, tangible ways.

Panarchy describes the way systems—whether forests, electrical grids, agriculture, coastal surges, public health, or human economies and governance—are part of even larger systems that interact in unpredictable ways. Although humans desire resiliency and stability in our lives to help us understand the world and survive, nothing in nature is permanently stable. How can society anticipate and adjust to the changes we see around us? Where Panarchy proposed a framework to understand how these transformational cycles work and how we might influence them, Applied Panarchy takes the scholarship to the next level, demonstrating how these concepts have been modified and refined. The book shows how panarchy theory intersects with other disciplines, and how it directly influences natural resources management and environmental stewardship.

Intended as a text for graduate courses in environmental sciences and related fields, Applied Panarchy picks up where Panarchy left off, inspiring new generations of scholars, researchers, and professionals to put its ideas to work in practical ways.
 

Review Quotes

"The nexus of thought and application that breaks down the disciplinary boundaries is clear to see in the examples provided in this book. I have no doubt that the broad academic movements investigating resilience in the Anthropocene will gain much from Applied Panarchy."
 
Biologist

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Part I. Panarchy Concepts
Chapter 1. Panarchy: Nature’s Rules
Lance H. Gunderson, Ahjond Garmestani, and Craig R. Allen

Part II. Applications of Panarchy Theory
Chapter 2. Panarchy, Cross-Scale Resilience, and Discontinuous Structures and Processes
Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen, and David G. Angeler
Chapter 3. The Adaptive Cycle: More Than a Metaphor
Shana M. Sundstrom and Craig R. Allen
Chapter 4. Scales of Coercion: Resilience, Regimes, and Panarchy
David G. Angeler and Craig R. Allen
Chapter 5. Applications of Spatial Regimes.
Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Ahjond Garmestani, Caleb Roberts, Shana M. Sundstrom, Dirac Twidwell, and Dan R. Uden
Chapter 6. An Engineering Perspective on Managing for Resilience and Panarchy
Ian Pumo, Margaret Kurth, Stephanie Galaitsi, and Igor Linkov
Chapter 7. Mapping Panarchy to Improve Visualization of Complex Environmental Change
Dirac Twidwell, Daniel R. Uden, Caleb P. Roberts, Brady W. Allred, Matthew O. Jones, David E. Naugle and Craig R. Allen

Part III. Diffusion of Panarchy Concepts
Chapter 8. Capacities for Navigating Large-Scale Sustainability Transformations: Exploring the Revolt and Remembrance Mechanisms for Shaping Collapse and Renewal in Social-Ecological Systems
Per Olsson, Carl Folke, and Michele-Lee Moore
Chapter 9. Panarchy and Law in the Anthropocene
Robin Kundis Craig, Barbara Cosens, Ahjond Garmestani, and J.B. Ruhl
Chapter 10. Panarchy and the Economy
Josh Farley and Megan Egler
Chapter 11. Assessing Panarchy in Food Systems: Cross-Scale Interactions in Flint, Michigan
Jennifer Hodbod and Chelsea Wentworth
Chapter 12. Panarchy and the Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
Brian C. Chaffin
Chapter 13. Cross-Scale Social-Ecological Stewardship for Navigating toward More Sustainable and Just Futures
F. Stuart Chapin III, Reinette Biggs, Nadia Sitas, Carl Folke, and Gary P. Kofinas

Part IV. Summary, Synthesis, and Future Advances
Chapter 14. Applications and Diffusion of Panarchy Theory
Lance H. Gunderson, Craig R. Allen, and Ahjond Garmestani

About the Editors
Contributors
Index