"SOCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL SYNTHESIS"

It has been increasingly recognized that human and natural systems are interconnected and inherently coupled. Hence, humans should not be perceived as external forces that alter our Earth's systems. Rather, humans should be considered as integral components with complex interactions and feedback with natural systems. Research has called for the importance of bridging across traditional boundaries of social and natural sciences for understanding and addressing contemporary sustainability challenges. Here there are several empirical examples under this research theme: 
(1) Hydrologic services and water institutions
Sustaining hydrologic ecosystem services is critical for human wellbeing but challenged by land use for agriculture and urban development. Water policy and management strive to safeguard hydrologic services, yet implementation is often fragmented. Understanding the spatial fit between water polices and hydrologic services is needed to assess the spatial targeting of policy portfolios at landscape scales. In this project, we investigated spatial fit between 30 different public water policies and four hydrologic services (surface and groundwater quality, freshwater supply, and flood regulation) that typifies tensions between agriculture, urban development, and freshwater resources.
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​FIGURE. 1. Spatial patterns of hydrologic ecosystem services (a) and cumulative coverage of water policies relevant for each service (b). Green indicates high supply of service or high policy coverage, and red represents low supply of service or low policy coverage.​ (Qiu et al. 2016)
(2) Resilience to water hazards
T​​ogether with an international team of social and natural scientists, we have completed a synthesis project funded by National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in Annapolis, MD, to understand how adaptive learning could enhance social-environmental resilience to repeated water hazards such as flooding and droughts. Specifically, by focusing the extreme flooding in Germany, we ask how and what do communities learn from repeated hydrological surprises for enhancing the resilience to similar future events, and using two cases in the U.S., we ask are agricultural and urban social-environmental systems resilience to past and future drought regimes (case of Lincoln, NE), and how to water restrictions alter social and biophysical responses to drought across an integrated urban-regional system (case of Austin, TX). 
FIGURE 2. Severe inundation of a small town built on the banks of the Elbe River in Saxony, Germany during the 2002 flood. 
FIGURE 3. Catastrophic impacts of drought on agriculture in the Midwestern U.S.
(3) Evidence-based causal chains
Anthropogenic environmental changes are profoundly altering our biosphere, presenting significant challenges to the functioning and resilience of ecosystems and thus prosperity of human society. These challenges for nature and people are complex and interconnected, such that effective solutions require bridging disparate disciplinary and sector boundaries (e.g., environment, natural resource management, development, and human health). The development of concerted solutions and transdisciplinary collaborations needs common theories of change that capture a shared understanding of linked social-ecological systems. Evidence-based causal chains offer a promising approach to achieving an integrated understanding of how actions affect ecosystems, the goods and services they sustain, and ultimately multiple dimensions of human well-being. While causal chains and their variants are common tools across disciplines, their uses remain highly inconsistent, limiting their ability to support and create a shared evidence base for integrated understanding and joint solutions. In this project, we first present the foundational concepts of causal chains linking disciplines and sectors that do not often intersect to elucidate effects of management actions on ecosystems and society (Fig. 4), and then present a set of guidance for building evidence-based causal chains for cross-disciplinary integration. We further discuss considerations that are important for establishing and implementing causal chains, including nonlinearity, tradeoffs and synergies, spatial heterogeneity, confounding factors and scales. Finally, we highlight science, practice and policy implications of applying causal chains to address real-world linked human-nature challenges. We encourage applications and tests of this framework to promote actions across disciplines and sectors, and achieve solutions to prominent global sustainable challenges. ​
FIGURE 4. Components of causal chains that link ecological and social outcomes to management actions in the context of global environmental changes. Green-to-yellow gradient shows the integration of human-natural systems (Qiu et al. 2018).
Sample Publications​
  1. Qiu, J., Wardropper, C.B., Rissman, A.R., Turner, M.G. 2017. Spatial fit between water quality policies and hydrologic ecosystem services in an urbanizing agricultural landscape. Landscape Ecology 32: 59-75. (pdf)
  2. Breyer B., Zipper, S.C., Qiu, J. 2018. Sociohydrological impacts of water conservation under anthropogenic drought in Austin, Texas. Water Resources Research 54(4): 3062-3080. (pdf)
  3. Zipper, S.C, Smith, K.H., Breyer, B., Qiu, J., Hermann, D., Kung, A. 2017. Urban and agricultural drought response of a coupled socio-environmental system: resilience and implications for governance. Ecology and Society 22(4): 39. (pdf)
  4. Wardropper, C.B., Mase, A.S., Qiu, J., Kohl, P., Booth, E.G., Rissman, A.R. 2020. Ecological worldview, agricultural or natural resource-based activities, and geography affect perceived importance of ecosystem services. Landscape and Urban Planning 197: 103768. (pdf)
  5. Game, E.T., Tallis, H., Olander, L., Alexander, S., Busch, J., Cartwright, N., Kalie, K.L., Masuda, Y.J., Mupepele, A., Qiu, J., Rooney, A., Sills, E., Sutherland, W.J. 2018. Cross-discipline evidence principles for sustainability policy. Nature Sustainability 1: 452-454. (pdf)
  6. Qiu, J., Game, E., Tallis, H., Olander, L., Glew, L., Kagan, J.S., Kalies, E.L., Michanowicz, D., Phelan, J., Polasky, S., Reed, J., Sills, E.O., Urban, D., Weaver, S.K. 2018. Evidence-based causal chains for linking health, development and conservation actions. BioScience 68: 182-193. (pdf) 
  7. ​Hamann, M., Berry, K., Chaigneau, T., Curry, T., Heilmayr, R., Henriksson, P., Hentati-Sundberg, J., Jina, A., Lindkvist, E., Lopez-Maldonado, Y., Nieminen, E., Piaggio, M., Qiu, J., Rocha, J., Schill, C., Shepon, A., Tilman, A., van den Bijgaart, I., Wu, T. 2018. "Inequality and biosphere." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 61-83. (pdf)