Adaptive capacity of coupled social-ecological systems to absorb climate extremes

Abstract

Ecosystems and society are strongly interlinked and are, therefore, considered as coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). A promising approach for assessing the impacts of climate extremes is based on the concept of social-ecological resilience (SER), which defines the capacity of a SES to delay the impact, reduce the severity of the impact and enhance recovery from it. The operationalization of the SER concept requires the integration of ecological resilience and of transformational processes of society. In this chapter, we provide examples from five transdisciplinary research projects, in which social and natural scientists have been involved, with a high degree of participation of nonacademic actors. We show how the resilience of coupled SESs is affected by climate extremes in different ways and how a transformation toward future SES and enhanced SER can be achieved. We show that, generally, diversification of ecosystems as well as of societal processes such as ecosystem management and communication strategies is an asset for increased resilience of SES to climate extremes.