Conceptualising Long-Term Socio-ecological Research (LTSER): Integrating the Social Dimension

In order to support the emerging network of long-term ecological research (LTER) sites across Europe, the European Union has launched ALTER-Net, a network aiming at lasting integration of long-term socio-economic, ecological and biodiversity research. Due to its high population density and long history of human habitation, however, Europe’s ecosystems are generally intensively used. Social and natural drivers are so inextricably intertwined that the notion of ‘socio-ecological’ systems is appropriate. Traditional natural science-based approaches are insufficient to understand these integrated systems, as they cannot adequately capture their relevant socio-economic dimensions. This is particularly relevant because the EU launched ALTER-Net has an explicit aim to support sustainability, a goal that requires integration of socio-economic and ecological dimensions. As such, LTER is challenged to significantly expand its focus from ecological to socio-ecological systems, thus transforming itself from LTER to long-term socio-ecological research or LTSER. In order to support this transformation, this chapter explores several approaches for conceptualising socio-economic dimensions of LTSER. It discusses how the socio-economic metabolism approach can be combined with theories of complex adaptive systems to generate heuristic models of society–nature interaction which can then be used to integrate concepts from the social sciences. In particular, the chapter discusses possible contributions from the fields of ecological anthropology and ecological economics and shows how participatory approaches can be integrated with innovative agent-based modelling concepts to arrive at an integrated representation of socio-ecological systems that can help to support local communities to move towards sustainability.