Recreation as a Social-Ecological Complex Adaptive System

The environment and society are both the context for and product of human actions and interactions. Outdoor recreation is the primary interaction many people have with the environment and it is an interaction that greatly contributes to human well-being. To sustainably manage the social and ecologic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2020-02, Vol.12 (3), p.753
Main Author: Morse, Wayde C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive systems
Climate change
Ecosystems
Emissions
Environmental economics
Landscape ecology
Natural resources
Public lands
Recreation
Social sciences
Sustainability
System theory
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Summary:The environment and society are both the context for and product of human actions and interactions. Outdoor recreation is the primary interaction many people have with the environment and it is an interaction that greatly contributes to human well-being. To sustainably manage the social and ecological components of outdoor recreation, an integrative and dynamic systems perspective is needed. Analyses that link recreation management and recreational experiences to both social and ecological outcomes across multiple sales and over time are not developed. This article will outline how a number of fragmented recreation management frameworks such as the recreation experience model, beneficial outcomes, the recreation opportunity spectrum, limits of acceptable change, and constraints theory can be organized within a larger social-ecological framework. The outdoor recreation meta-framework presented here links structuration theory from the social sciences with theories of complex adaptive systems and hierarchical patch dynamics from ecology to understand the human and ecological drivers for and responses to outdoor recreation.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su12030753