R Carpenter
Biographic Data
| ID | 17000 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Carpenter |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Carpenter |
| SIGNATURE | CARPENTER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8097-8700 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 973 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
A Role for Agrarian Populism in Adler’s 99 Percent Economy
U.S. capitalism and the prospects for democratic socialism: Considerations of Paul Adler’s “The 99% economy: How democratic socialism can overcome the crises of capitalism”
Anticipating the global redistribution of people and property
Biosphere Futures: A Database of Social-Ecological Scenarios
Biosphere Futures (https://biospherefutures.net/) is a new online database to collect and discover scenario studies from across the world, with a specific focus on scenarios that explicitly incorporate interdependencies between humans and their supporting ecosystems. It provides access to a globally diverse collection of case studies that includes most ecosystems and regions, enabling exploration of the multifaceted ways in which the future might…
Response diversity as a sustainability strategy
The programme on ecosystem change and society (Pecs) – a decade of deepening social-ecological research through a place-based focus
The Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) was established in 2011, and is now one of the major international social-ecological systems (SES) research networks. During this time, SES research has undergone a phase of rapid growth and has grown into an influential branch of sustainability science. In this Perspective, we argue that SES research has also deepened over the past decade, and helped to shed light on key dimensions of SES dyna…
Earth stewardship: Shaping a sustainable future through interacting policy and norm shifts
Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in pub…
Resilience: Now more than ever
Coupled human and natural systems: The evolution and applications of an integrated framework
Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity…
Significance Testing of Archeological Site 41SR242, The Cornelio Alvarez Sr. Site, Starr County, Texas
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), conducted National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility testing of the Cornelio Alvarez Sr. site (41SR242) as part of the State Loop (SL) 195 project (Project) (CSJ: 3632-01-001) in Starr County, Texas. Subsequent to the field investigations, SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA) conducted artifact analysis, reporting, and curation preparation for the multi-component historic and prehistor…
Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research
Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle
Walker, B., S. R. Carpenter, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, G. D. Peterson, M. Scheffer, M. Schoon, and F. R. Westley. 2020. Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle. Ecology and Society 25(4):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12072-250423
Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem
Transnational corporations and the challenge of biosphere stewardship
Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions
C. S. ‘Buzz’ Holling, 6 December 1930 – 16 August 2019
The ecologist C. S. Holling was a visionary of change in nature and society
Reparation Ecologies: Regimes of Repair in Populist Agroecology
Amidst the backdrop of attention to populism in general, it is instructive to understand populism through social movements focused on food and agriculture. Agrarian populism is particularly salient in agrifood movements. Agroecology has been widely identified as a domain of populist claims on environmental and social governance surrounding agricultural–ecological and political–economic systems. As authoritarian populist leaders gain power through…
Dancing on the volcano: Social Exploration in Times of Discontent
Carpenter, S. R., C. Folke, M. Scheffer, and F. R. Westley. 2019. Dancing on the volcano: social exploration in times of discontent. Ecology and Society 24(1):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10839-240123
Rethinking resource allocation in science
US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of peer reviewers. Similar funding systems are in place in most advanced democracies. However, in spite of its venerable history, proposal peer review is increasingly struggling to deal with the increasing mismatc…
Understanding relationships among ecosystem services across spatial scales and over time
Sustaining ecosystem services (ES), mitigating their tradeoffs and avoiding unfavorable future trajectories are pressing social-environmental challenges that require enhanced understanding of their relationships across scales. Current knowledge of ES relationships is often constrained to one spatial scale or one snapshot in time. In this research, we integrated biophysical modeling with future scenarios to examine changes in relationships among e…
The synergistic effect of manure supply and extreme precipitation on surface water quality
Over-enrichment of phosphorus (P) in agroecosystems contributes to eutrophication of surface waters. In the Midwest US and elsewhere, climate change is increasing the frequency of high-intensity precipitation events, which can serve as a primary conduit of P transport within watersheds. Despite uncertainty in their estimates, process-based watershed models are important tools that help characterize watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry and scal…
Bright spots: Seeds of a good Anthropocene
The scale, rate, and intensity of humans’ environmental impact has engendered broad discussion about how to find plausible pathways of development that hold the most promise for fostering a better future in the Anthropocene. However, the dominance of dystopian visions of irreversible environmental degradation and societal collapse, along with overly optimistic utopias and business‐as‐usual scenarios that lack insight and innovation, frustrate pro…
Biodiversity and ecosystem services require Ipbes to take novel approach to scenarios
What does the future hold for the world's ecosystems and benefits that people obtain from them? While the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified the development of scenarios as a key to helping decision makers identify potential impacts of different policy options, it currently lacks a long-term scenario strategy. IPBES will decide how it will approach scenarios at its plenary meeting on 22-28 Feb…
Local perspectives and global archetypes in scenario development
Wardropper, C. B., S. Gillon, A. S. Mase, E. A. McKinney, S. R. Carpenter, and A. R. Rissman. 2016. Local perspectives and global archetypes in scenario development. Ecology and Society 21(2):12.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08384-210212
Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological Systems
Walker, B., C. Holling, S. R. Carpenter and A. P. Kinzig 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-00650-090205
Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability
Folke, C., S. R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockström. 2010. Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03610-150420
Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity…
Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research
Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Humans have continuously interacted with natural systems, resulting in the formation and development of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). Recent studies reveal the complexity of organizational, spatial, and temporal couplings of CHANS. These couplings have evolved from direct to more indirect interactions, from adjacent to more distant linkages, from local to global scales, and from simple to complex patterns and processes. Untangling co…
Reconnecting to the Biosphere
Advancing sustainability through mainstreaming a social–ecological systems perspective
Adaptive Capacity and Traps
Adaptive capacity is the ability of a living system, such as a social-ecological system, to adjust responses to changing internal demands and external drivers. Although adaptive capacity is a frequent topic of study in the resilience literature, there are few formal models. This paper introduces such a model and uses it to explore adaptive capacity by contrast with the opposite condition, or traps. In a socialecological rigidity trap, strong self…
Biodiversity and ecosystem services require Ipbes to take novel approach to scenarios
What does the future hold for the world's ecosystems and benefits that people obtain from them? While the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified the development of scenarios as a key to helping decision makers identify potential impacts of different policy options, it currently lacks a long-term scenario strategy. IPBES will decide how it will approach scenarios at its plenary meeting on 22-28 Feb…
Scenarios for Ecosystem Services: An Overview
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) scenarios address changes in ecosystem services and their implications for human well-being. Ecological changes pose special challenges for longterm thinking, because of the possibility of regime shifts that occur rapidly yet alter the availability of ecosystem services for generations. Moreover, ecological feedbacks can intensify human modification of ecosystems, creating a spiral of poverty and ecosystem…
Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions
Navigating the Back Loop: Fostering Social Innovation and Transformation in Ecosystem Management
Biggs, R., F. R. Westley, and S. R. Carpenter. 2010. Navigating the back loop: fostering social innovation and transformation in ecosystem management. Ecology and Society 15(2): 9. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03411-150209
Drivers, "Slow" Variables, "Fast" Variables, Shocks, and Resilience
Walker, B. H., S. R. Carpenter, J. Rockstrom, A.-S. Crépin, and G. D. Peterson. 2012. Drivers, "slow" variables, "fast" variables, shocks, and resilience. Ecology and Society 17(3): 30. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05063-170330
Response diversity as a sustainability strategy
Resilience: Now more than ever
Coupled human and natural systems: The evolution and applications of an integrated framework
Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle
Walker, B., S. R. Carpenter, C. Folke, L. Gunderson, G. D. Peterson, M. Scheffer, M. Schoon, and F. R. Westley. 2020. Navigating the chaos of an unfolding global cycle. Ecology and Society 25(4):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12072-250423
Progress on Nonpoint Pollution: Barriers & Opportunities
Nonpoint source pollution is the runoff of pollutants (including soil and nutrients) from agricultural, urban, and other lands (as opposed to point source pollution, which comes directly from one outlet). Many efforts have been made to combat both types of pollution, so why are we making so little progress in improving water quality by reducing runoff of soil and nutrients into lakes and rivers? This essay examines the challenges inherent in: 1) …
Dual thinking for scientists
Scheffer, M., J. Bascompte, T. K. Bjordam, S. R. Carpenter, L. B. Clarke, C. Folke, P. Marquet, N. Mazzeo, M. Meerhoff, O. Sala, and F. R. Westley. 2015. Dual thinking for scientists. Ecology and Society 20(2): 3. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07434-200203
Resilience: Accounting for the Noncomputable
Plans to solve complex environmental problems should always consider the role of surprise. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to emphasize known computable aspects of a problem while neglecting aspects that are unknown and failing to ask questions about them. The tendency to ignore the noncomputable can be countered by considering a wide range of perspectives, encouraging transparency with regard to conflicting viewpoints, stimulating a diversity …
Earth stewardship: Shaping a sustainable future through interacting policy and norm shifts
Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in pub…
Reparation Ecologies: Regimes of Repair in Populist Agroecology
Amidst the backdrop of attention to populism in general, it is instructive to understand populism through social movements focused on food and agriculture. Agrarian populism is particularly salient in agrifood movements. Agroecology has been widely identified as a domain of populist claims on environmental and social governance surrounding agricultural–ecological and political–economic systems. As authoritarian populist leaders gain power through…
Plausible futures of a social-ecological system: Yahara watershed, Wisconsin, USA
Carpenter, S. R., E. G. Booth, S. Gillon, C. J. Kucharik, S. Loheide, A. S. Mase, M. Motew, J. Qiu, A. R. Rissman, J. Seifert, E. Soylu, M. Turner, and C. B. Wardropper. 2015. Plausible futures of a social-ecological system: Yahara watershed, Wisconsin, USA. Ecology and Society 20(2): 10. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07433-200210
Program on ecosystem change and society: An international research strategy for integrated social–ecological systems
Dancing on the volcano: Social Exploration in Times of Discontent
Carpenter, S. R., C. Folke, M. Scheffer, and F. R. Westley. 2019. Dancing on the volcano: social exploration in times of discontent. Ecology and Society 24(1):23. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10839-240123
A Guidebook for Technology Assessment and Impact Analysis
Summary: Accomplishments and New Directions of Food Web Management in Lake Mendota
The Report of the Ecological Society of America Committee on the Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management
Ecosystem management is management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem composition, structure, and function. In recent years, sustainability has become an explicitly stated, even legislatively mandated, goal of natural resource management agencies. In practi…
Resilience and Restoration of Lakes
Ecology should apply to ecosystem management: A comment»
The recent Forum in this journal, Perspectives on Ecosystem Management, prompts a comment that may seem obvious: ecology, and associated environmental dis- ciplines are, and will become more so, the undergirding sciences for ecosystem manage- ment-just as the health sciences are for medicine. But, the readiness of ecology for such applications is a matter of debate among leaders in the field, while it is being taken for granted, in terms of limit…
Integrating salmon, trees and people: Watershed management: Balancing sustainability and environmental change
Nonpoint Pollution of Surface Waters With Phosphorus and Nitrogen
Agriculture and urban activities are major sources of phosphorus and nitrogen to aquatic ecosystems. Atmospheric deposition further contributes as a source of N. These nonpoint inputs of nutrients are difficult to measure and regulate because they derive from activities dispersed over wide areas of land and are variable in time due to effects of weather. In aquatic ecosystems, these nutrients cause diverse problems such as toxic algal blooms, los…
Keystone Species and Academic-Agency Collaboration
Ecological and Social Dynamics in Simple Models of Ecosystem Management
"Simulation models were developed to explore and illustrate dynamics of socioecological systems. The ecosystem is a lake subject to phosphorus pollution. Phosphorus flows from agriculture to upland soils, to surface waters, where it cycles between water and sediments. The ecosystem is multi-stable, and moves among domains of attraction depending on the history of pollutant inputs. The alternative states yield different economic benefits. Agents f…
Managing the Resilience of Lakes: A Multi-agent Modeling Approach
We demonstrate an approach for integrating social and ecological models to study ecosystem management strategies. We focus on the management of lake eutrophication. A model has been developed in which the dynamics of the lake, the learning dynamics of society, and the interactions between ecology and society are included. Analyses with the model show that active learning is important to retain the resilience of lakes. Although very low levels of …
From Metaphor to Measurement: Resilience of What to What?
Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems
Nature, society and history in two contrasting landscapes in Wisconsin, USA
Resilience Management in Social-ecological Systems: A Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach
Walker, B., S. R. Carpenter, J. M. Anderies, N. Abel, G. Cumming, M. A. Janssen, L. Lebel, J. Norberg, G. D. Peterson and R. Pritchard 2002. Resilience Management in Social-ecological Systems: a Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach. Conservation Ecology 6(1):14. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-00356-060114
Scenario Planning: A Tool for Conservation in an Uncertain World
Conservation decisions about how, when, and where to act are typically based on our expectations for the future. When the world is highly unpredictable and we are working from a limited range of expectations, however, our expectations will frequently be proved wrong. Scenario planning offers a framework for developing more resilient conservation policies when faced with uncontrollable, irreducible uncertainty. A scenario in this context is an acc…
Assessing Future Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin
Peterson, G. D., T. Beard Jr., B. E. Beisner, E. M. Bennett, S. R. Carpenter, G. Cumming, C. Dent and T. D. Havlicek 2003. Assessing Future Ecosystem Services: a Case Study of the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin. Conservation Ecology 7(3):1. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-00557-070301
Spatial Complexity, Resilience, and Policy Diversity: Fishing on Lake-rich Landscapes
The dynamics of and policies governing spatially coupled social-ecological mosaics are considered for the case of fisheries in a lake district. A microeconomic model of households addresses agent decisions at three hierarchic levels: (1) selection of the lake district from among a larger set of alternative places to live or visit, (2) selection of a base location within the lake district, and (3) selection of a portfolio of ecosystem services to …
Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological Systems
Walker, B., C. Holling, S. R. Carpenter and A. P. Kinzig 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-00650-090205
Surrogates for Resilience of Social–Ecological Systems
Global Consequences of Land Use
Land use has generally been considered a local environmental issue, but it is becoming a force of global importance. Worldwide changes to forests, farmlands, waterways, and air are being driven by the need to provide food, fiber, water, and shelter to more than six billion people. Global croplands, pastures, plantations, and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by large increases in energy, water, and fertilizer consumption, a…
Uncertainty in Discount Models and Environmental Accounting
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is controversial for environmental issues, but is nevertheless employed by many governments and private organizations for making environmental decisions. Controversy centers on the practice of economic discounting in CBA for decisions that have substantial long-term consequences, as do most environmental decisions. Customarily, economic discounting has been calculated at a constant exponential rate, a practice that wei…
Variance as a Leading Indicator of Regime Shift in Ecosystem Services
Many environmental conflicts involve pollutants such as greenhouse gas emissions that are dispersed through space and cause losses of ecosystem services. As pollutant emissions rise in one place, a spatial cascade of declining ecosystem services can spread across a larger landscape because of the dispersion of the pollutant. This paper considers the problem of anticipating such spatial regime shifts by monitoring time series of the pollutant or a…
Scenarios for Ecosystem Services: An Overview
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) scenarios address changes in ecosystem services and their implications for human well-being. Ecological changes pose special challenges for longterm thinking, because of the possibility of regime shifts that occur rapidly yet alter the availability of ecosystem services for generations. Moreover, ecological feedbacks can intensify human modification of ecosystems, creating a spiral of poverty and ecosystem…
Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural systems vary across space, time, and organizational units. They also exhibit nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, an…
Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Humans have continuously interacted with natural systems, resulting in the formation and development of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). Recent studies reveal the complexity of organizational, spatial, and temporal couplings of CHANS. These couplings have evolved from direct to more indirect interactions, from adjacent to more distant linkages, from local to global scales, and from simple to complex patterns and processes. Untangling co…
Biology (40 works) · Environmental resource management (36 works) · Ecology (35 works) · Environmental Science (33 works) · Geography (33 works) · Computer Science (29 works) · Economics (25 works) · Ecosystem (25 works) · Business (24 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (23 works)