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Contributing authors are at the forefront of a new and growing area of research linking law to social-ecological resilience and applying resilience as a bridging concept. Eighteen chapters cover a range of perspectives on factors enabling or constraining adaptive water governance and detailed historical assessment of six water basins in the U.S. yield insights into cross-scale interactions.

Visit the publisher's website for more information and to download a product flyer or purchase a copy of the book: https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319724706.

A new special feature in Ecology & Society focuses on the intersection of law, governance, and ecological resilience. Practicing Panarchy: Assessing Legal Flexibility, Ecological Resilience, and Adaptive Governance in U.S. Resilience Water Systems Experiencing Climate Change is edited by Brian Chaffin, Lance Gunderson, and Barbara Cosens.

The special feature articles focus on six watersheds in the United States (Anacostia River, Central Platte River, Klamath River, Columbia River, Middle Rio Grand River, and the Everglades wetlands) and assesses their capacity to adapt and respond to rapid environmental change. In all six cases the river systems involve complex governance systems and historical legacies that influence their capacity to cope with climate change and other stresses. By exploring these cases through a legal lens, the articles help advance our understanding of the role of law and governance in processes of adaptation and transformation. An introduction to the special feature sets the context and lays the foundation for a novel interdisciplinary approach to understanding complex, cross-scale interactions in large watershed systems.

Reference (Introduction to the Special Feature):

Cosens, B. A., L. Gunderson, and B. C. Chaffin. 2018. Introduction to the Special Feature Practicing Panarchy: Assessing legal flexibility, ecological resilience, and adaptive governance in regional water systems experiencing rapid environmental change. Ecology and Society 23(1):4.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09524-230104

Link to the Special Feature table of contents:
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/view.php?sf=122

Published by MIT Press, Milkoreit's new book explores the role of cognition in global climate policy to help explain political behavior and decision making. Manjana bridges disciplines to make sense of climate change negotiations by examining the underlying thoughts, beliefs, and emotions of individuals and groups.

More info:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/mindmade-politics

Manjana Milkoreit is Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University and a member of the Resilience Alliance.

In the paper the authors describe how indigenous communities along the central coast of British Columbia built rock walls to change the slope of beaches and expand the optimal habitat for clams, thus contributing to their food security. The management of the clam gardens is part of a suite of resource stewardship practices that are evidenced by structural and cultural legacies still visible on the coast today. In their study the authors compare clam diversity, density, recruitment and biomass between walled beaches and unmodified beaches. They found higher clam density, recruits, and biomass in modified beach terraces created by the ancient rock walls compared to the clam density in nearby unmodified non-walled beaches. The authors also discuss how traditional governance systems involving proprietorship over territory and systems of reciprocity further enhanced system resilience.

The best paper award recognizes novel research that integrates science and policy for sustainable social-ecological systems. The winning paper is voted on by the board of editors from a short list compiled from all peer-reviewed papers published during the year. A prize of 500 Euro from the Foundation of Scientific Symbiosis, scientific-symbiosis.org is awarded to the authors.

Link: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss4/art20/

Citation:
Jackley, J., L. Gardner, A. F. Djunaedi, and A. K. Salomon. 2016. Ancient clam gardens, traditional management portfolios, and the resilience of coupled human-ocean systems. Ecology and Society 21(4):20.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08747-210420

As ecological boundaries shift in response to climate change and other anthropogenic forces, detecting regime shifts using spatial data on animal communities, in place of vegetation communities used to define ecoregions, may provide more accuracy.

Using Fisher information, an information theory approach suitable for capturing patterns in system dynamics from multi-variate data, Sundstrom and colleagues used data from avian and zooplankton communities to identify spatial regimes and compare how well they line up with existing ecological boundaries determined using classification methods. The boundaries detected using animal data were considered to reflect ecological reality more than boundaries defined by the classification systems, suggesting that the approach could help with tracking shifting boundaries over time.

The authors also found the Fisher information approach consistently identified spatial regime shifts. They suggest that further research could help managers to select subgroups of species to monitor ecological stability within a community. Craig Allen, one of the paper's co-authors states "we believe the idea of spatial regimes is much more useful, potentially, in identifying impacts and responses to climate change than individually modelling species' responses".

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12709/full

Citation:
Sundstrom, S. M., Eason, T., Nelson, R. J., Angeler, D. G., Barichievy, C., Garmestani, A. S., Graham, N. A.J., Granholm, D., Gunderson, L., Knutson, M., Nash, K. L., Spanbauer, T., Stow, C. A. and Allen, C. R. (2017), Detecting spatial regimes in ecosystems. Ecol Lett, 20: 19-32. doi:10.1111/ele.12709