Year of Award
2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Name
Forest and Conservation Science
Department or School/College
W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation
Committee Chair
Alexander L. Metcalf
Commitee Members
Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf, Brian C. Chaffin, Theresa M. Floyd, Daniel R. Uden
Keywords
Adaptive capacity, Human behavior, Quantitative social science, Regime shifts, Social-ecological systems, Transformation
Abstract
The adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems to maintain resilience or undergo transformation is increasingly important for navigating global change. Although social interactions and ecological disturbances are often cited as an essential element of social-ecological systems, social interactions are often undertheorized and simplistic, and the relative effects of both social and ecological processes are rarely considered in tandem. In this dissertation, I work towards advancing social-ecological systems research by highlighting opportunities for improved quantitative social science methods, using structurally explicit methods to evaluate the mechanisms underpinning social interactions, and characterizing scalar mismatches in a social-ecological system experiencing a regime shift. In Chapter 1, I provide an overview and introduction for my dissertation. In Chapter 2, I undertook a literature review of social-ecological system studies that quantified social interactions, concluding with a typology for improving conceptual clarity, a compendium of social interaction measures including mapped empirical relationships of each to focal concepts in social-ecological systems science to support theoretical development, and a discussion of opportunities for improved treatment of social interaction complexity in future studies. In Chapter 3, I assessed how social networks and disturbance influenced behaviors of agricultural producers navigating a wide-spread regime shift in the Great Plains biome of Nebraska, US. This social-ecological system is experiencing a regime shift, whereby eastern redcedar is encroaching upon grasslands causing persistent change. I found social network measures were not only more predictive of management behavior than disturbance, but also more predictive of transformative, rather than adaptive, behavior. These findings indicate social interactions, though often overlooked, are critical for influencing adaptive and transformative behavior in social-ecological systems. In Chapter 4, I characterized scalar mismatches between social and ecological components of the Great Plains biome in Nebraska. I found that individual producers respond to collective-level factors and regional-level disturbance as they attempt to manage this regime shift, often with limited success, indicating that the social level responsible for managing this transition is misaligned with the ecological level of the process. These findings highlight opportunities for higher social levels to support individual-level efforts to manage regime shifts in this social-ecological system in Nebraska with implications for detecting and characterizing scalar mismatches globally. In Chapter 5, I synthesize my findings and provide an arc of my contribution to social-ecological systems system.
Recommended Citation
Nesbitt, Holly Kathleen, "QUANTITATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODS, SOCIAL NETWORKS, AND SCALAR MISMATCHES: ADVANCING SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE TOWARDS ADAPTATION AND TRANSFORMATION" (2022). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12015.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12015
Appendix 2
© Copyright 2022 Holly Kathleen Nesbitt