Special Issue in Ecology & Society – Editors: Miguel Carriquiry, Néstor Mazzeo, Matías Piaggio and Juan Carlos Rocha
Natural resources and ecosystems are under increasing pressure as human demands for food, water, fiber, and energy expand in an accelerating pace. In response, the allocation of resources and in particular land has been shifting along with agricultural production systems. These changes have the potential to lead to profound changes on the functioning of ecosystems, as well as the services they can provide. The full impact of these changes, and the speed at which they can occurs is difficult or impossible to predict given the complexity of these processes, including nonlinearities and tipping points. A significant amount of work has been done documenting some of the changes in the use of resources, most notably land, and observed impacts. Salient among these are the studies on the deforestation of the Amazon biome, which has social and environmental impacts at multiple scales of time and space. The focus is on land-use as the natural link between global drivers, decision makers, and ecosystem changes.
Latin America is unique, in the sense that multiple heterogeneous stakeholders are involved in land use decisions. Production models are wide, going from small scale subsistence household to large scale farmers and multinational companies. Every specific case has different drivers to deal with pressures at local and global scales.
The South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainable Studies (SARAS2) is coordinating a special issue in Ecology & Society looking to highlight the research for Seeking sustainable pathways for land use in Latin America produced in the region. The special issue will contain 6 to 8 papers, and is aimed at tackling any of the following relevant topics and questions:
Drivers of land use decision making process framed in a social-ecological systems.
Land use and ecosystem services
Biophysical, economic and governance interrelationships for resilient based management of natural resources
How heterogeneous land use productive systems are affected by external (natural and non-natural) shocks? Which are the determinants of the heterogeneous impacts?
We encourage scientist from different disciplines to submit their manuscript. Multidisciplinary approaches are encouraged, but disciplinary approaches will also be considered. An email of intent, including and abstract and the call reference N° CP-002-17 should be sent to Matías Piaggio (opencall@saras-institute.org) by March 31st, 2017. Six to eight papers will be invited to submit a full paper. The deadline for full paper submission is August 1st, 2017. Manuscripts should not exceed 5000 words. Submitted papers will be sent to reviewers.