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 From
Yardstick to Gyroscope:
Interdisciplinary Methods for the Long-Term Study of Social-Ecological
Systems
Course Description
The social sciences represent a diverse and intellectually rich array of
disciplines that include anthropology, economics, geography, and sociology. In
response to the challenges faced by society, these disciplines have moved in the
past 50 years toward more integrative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative
research contributing to the collection and analysis of long-term data sets
often with the purpose of influencing environmental decision-making.
The convergence represents the disciplinary response to the clear demand for
solutions that meet human needs and protect essential ecosystem functions that
vary in complex ways across different temporal and spatial scales. We examine in
this course the implications of this change for the practice of research by
focusing on humans as biological and cultural organisms embedded within social
and ecological systems.
Our goal is to explore how socio-ecological research can be integrated into the
deliberative process that ensures the science is judged both relevant to
environmental decision-making and credible to interested or affected parties.
Contacts
Dr. Ted L Gragson
University of Georgia
706.542.1460
tgragson@uga.edu
Dr. Laura Odgen
Florida International University
305.348.6663
ogdenl@fiu.edu
Dr. J. Morgan Grove
U.S. Forest Service-Burlington
802.951.6771 ext.1111
mgrove@fs.fed.us
Dr. Christopher Boone
BES/CAP - Arizona State University
480.727.6017
cgboone@asu.edu
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 2009
Quickstart
First-time Class Instructions & Reminders for using the Virtual
Classroom.
Entering the virtual classroom for the first time or need to refresh
your memory? This is your first stop.
Upcoming: Apr. 9 - Apr. 27, 2009 Spotlight
 To
achieve our objectives for this course we focus on the practice of
research at four Long-Term Ecological Research sites. Each site is
described along with the organization of research, and how ecological
and social sciences have been integrated. The Coweeta
LTER will take the lead from April 6 to April 27.
April 20 (CWT): Landscape Economics
Instructors - Ted Gragson
(Biographical
Sketch)
John Chamblee
(Biographical
Sketch)
Course Synopsis
(including readings) -
Households require and demand real property to meet their production and consumption
needs and impose both transitory and permanent changes to the land. Such changes include
adding fertility, building terraces, or establishing and maintaining planned towns.
These landesque investments carpet a landscape with an anticipated life beyond that of
any given crop, household, village, or city. They are fixed in space, but still vary
across it according to pre-existing physiographic and ecological conditions. Landesque
investments are also fluid in time, reflecting not only existing local variation, but
also locally developed knowledge of place. Landesque investments often subsume the
changes inherited from past users as well as create legacies for subsequent inhabitants.
Human land-use decisions change over time and across populations. However, they are also
facilitated or hindered by overlays of long-term land use legacies, as well as recent
regulatory frameworks -- both of which can exist local level and beyond. Scaling
household decision-making to a regional level is thus critical for bridging between
physically-mediated processes such as climate and socially-mediated processes such as
political organization.
We discuss the analysis of diverse sources of evidence (e.g., cultural resource
management data, local statistics, land ownership parcels) to map land-use intensity and
transitivity conceptually and geographically. These approaches give recognition to the
fact that the landscapes produced by empirical households are much patchier than those
predicted by utility-maximization. The diversity of household decisions typically
exceeds the practical allowance of full factorial design experiments; and optimal
household decision-making references the historical context for the decision rather than
being an absolute, instantaneous event .
(More)
Previous Sessions (CWT):
April 20 (CWT): Landscape Economics.
Instructor -
Carolyn Dehring
(Biographical Sketch)
Course Synopsis (including readings)
Geographic information systems and the relatively widespread availability of real property sales
information are contributing to a revival in land economics research. Questions concerning the economic value of environmental amenities, or
the regulations designed to protect these amenities, can now be addressed using the revealed preference methodological
approach. This approach uses observed market choices that individuals make to reveal their underlying preferences and to
estimate their values for goods and services. Revealed preference enables the 'price' of amenities for which markets do not
exist to be inferred from observing and analyzing the price of goods from which markets do exist. In this session we will
discuss hedonic pricing models as example of a revealed preference method. The basic concept is that real property is a
heterogeneous good consisting of a bundle of characteristics, each of which contributes to the sales price of the good.
These characteristics may include the proximity to permanently protected open space, water quality, or development rights.
.
(More)
April 6 (CWT): Introduction to the Coweeta LTER.
Instructor -
Ted Gragson
(Biographical Sketch)
Course Synopsis (including readings)
This lecture will introduce the Coweeta LTER.
.
(More)
2009 Course Calendar/Topical Outline
Additional presentations from
each site draw attention to long-term research that has a) linked
pattern and process, b) been strategically designed to integrate social
and ecological data, and c) placed behavior in space and time.
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