2007/08/10 11:30 Nicholas Magliocca, "Induced Coupling: An Approach to Modeling and Managing Complex Human-Landscape Interaction", ISSS Tokyo 2007
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Introduction by Gary Metcalf
- Recipient of the Sir Geoffrey Vickers award for ISSS 2007.
[Nick Magliocca]
Induced coupling, coming out of human and landscape
Emergent naturalized interaction is the result of an induced coupling
Complexity driven by population growth, and mitigation of technology
Natural hazards
Two pictures:
- Fire
- Barrier island
Fire as a natural ecosystem
- Seasonal conditions result in fast changes
Barrier island
- Overwash helps maintain elevation and width relative to size
- If have houses, they get washed away
Get a linear intensification of natural disturbance events, yet nonlinear intensification of the effects
- About the same number of fires, but bigger impacts
Coupling: like a celtic knot
- Interconnections, one change impacts everywhere
Similarly, classic predator / prey: one impacts others
- Each ecosystem has a flow coming in and out
- Can have one way interactions, e.g. humans eating maple sugar
Traditional human-landscape interactions
- Landslides, earthquakes have short-terms impacts, don't see tight coupling in natural ecosystems
Induced coupling:
- e.g. energy accumlation, with ignition sources, creates fires
- If we suppress fires, creating opportunity for urban development, which links back to fire suppression
Hierarchical complex systems framework
- Can describe how system components are organized, by temporal and spatial scales
- Self-organization, tend to create order (similar to positive feedback)
- Dissipation, tends to oppose order, smoothing out differences in time and space (similar to negative feedback)
Traffic in downtown Tokyo
- Individual behaviours, that can be described as jams
Natural systems have a similar reasoning: can talk about different sand grains that form dunes, that make barrier islands
- A hierarchical complex system
Why is induced coupling "induced"?
- Manifestation on new temporal and spatial scales
- They don't have the large scale of natural processes
Overwash: we build beaches
Protect measures have both first and second-order effects
- Rescale natural processes in space
- Overwash, where it can and can't operate in interest of Outer Banks in North Carolina
- When sea level rises, storms and surge levels get worse
Another problem: rescaling natural processes in time
- Protect yourself against small, frequent fires, but then build up of fuel source drives bigger fires
When we alter nature processes, we have to think about it changes on temporal and spatial scales
Social decisions on environmental manager
- Usual behaviour is risk averse
- Deal with concrete threats, e.g. fire burning my house, not the abstract
- Solutions often prohibitively costsly
Propose induced coupling's role to address management failures in both physical and social
- It's an ideal tool for collaborative problem-solving
