Knowledge co-production in the Helge å catchment: a comparative analysis

Addressing sustainability challenges in landscape management requires processes for co-producing usable knowledge together with those who will use that knowledge. Participatory futures methods are powerful tools for attaining such knowledge. The applications of such methods are diverse and understanding the intricacies of the knowledge co-production process is important to further develop these research practices. To improve participatory futures methods and contribute to systematic and critical reflections on methodology, we present a comparative analysis of four research projects that applied participatory futures methods in the same study area. Conducted between 2011 and 2020, these projects aimed to co-produce knowledge about the future provision of ecosystem services in the Helge å catchment area in southern Sweden. For structuring the post-hoc, self-reflexive analysis, we developed a framework dividing the knowledge co-production process into three dimensions: settings, synthesis and diffusion. We based the analysis on documentation from the projects, a two-step questionnaire to each research team, a workshop with co-authors and interviews with key participants. The comparison highlights steps in project decision-making, explicit and implicit assumptions in our respective approaches and how these assumptions informed process design in the projects. Our detailed description of the four knowledge co-production processes points to the importance of flexibility in research design, but also the necessity for researchers and other participants to adapt as the process unfolds

How on Earth? : Operationalizing the ecosystem service concept for sustainability

Production landscapes are at the center of many of the sustainability challenges that we face. The ecosystem service concept has risen in prominence over the last decades as a tool to support sustainable landscape management. Stewardship has been suggested as an approach that individuals and groups of actors can practice when striving for sustainability in complex situations. In this thesis, I explore how the ecosystem service concept can be used as a tool to support the stewardship practices of various local actors who are engaging in sustainable landscape management. The core of this thesis is a participatory resilience assessment conducted together with a diverse group of actors, all involved in different forms of landscape management in the Helgeå catchment in Southern Sweden. In Paper I, I describe the participatory ecosystem service bundles analysis that was part of the process. In Paper II, I describe the process as a whole and show how participating supported learning and articulation of complexity thinking. In Paper III, I compare this process with three other knowledge co-production processes from the Helgeå catchment, and trace how different theoretical approaches led to both similar and diverging ecosystem service knowledge outputs. Finally, in Paper IV, I use a photo elicitation exercise to articulate different narratives of how sense of home motivates private, non-industrial forest owners in the Helgeå catchment to engage in stewardship practice. Together, these four papers show that the ecosystem service concept can support sustainability by facilitating knowledge co-production processes about complex challenges in landscape management. In such settings, it can function as a pedagogical tool and bridging concept. For participating civil servants, ecosystem service knowledge and terminology were also used strategically when communicating with actors in their own organizations, effectively influencing their situated agency to practice stewardship. Finally, the ecosystem service concept has the potential to be useful in the dialogue between private land owners and other actors. However, some pathways to stewardship, such as those rooted in a sense for history and community, would be better represented by other, more relational human-nature conceptualizations. This means that while the operationalization of the ecosystem service concept can contribute to stewardship practices in pursuit of sustainability, there are also important limitations that need to be taken into account in each context of use

Identifying ecotopes on a regionalscale in Burkina Faso

Sudano-Sahelian West Africa is expected to undergo major changes to its biophysical systems asa result of climate and land use change. A majority of the population in Sudano-Sahelian BurkinaFaso is directly dependent on the land for their livelihoods. Therefore, in light of the expectedenvironmental changes, it is essential to understand how social and ecological systems areinterlinked to safeguard people’s livelihoods. For this purpose, a landscape approach focusing onecotopes was developed by Sinare (2013) for mapping the sets of provisioning ecosystemservices supplied in the village landscape. To increase management relevance, the purpose of thepresent study was to investigate if and how the ecotopes can be scaled up. The results show thatthe ecotopes can be generalized from the village scale to a larger landscape level and that theecotopes can be mapped to a degree satisfactory enough to capture the composition of thelandscape using easily accessible remotely sensed data. These maps can then be used in thedecision process when designing locally adapted management interventions that will help sustainthe social and ecological resilience in Sudano-Sahelian Burkina Faso, a multi-functionallandscape that is undergoing large environmental and societal changes

Mapping social-ecological systems archetypes

Achieving sustainable development goals requires targeting and monitoring sustainable solutions tailored to different social and ecological contexts. A social-ecological systems (SESs) framework was developed to help diagnose problems, identify complex interactions, and solutions tailored to each SES. Here we develop a data-driven method for upscaling the SES framework and apply it to a context where data is scarce, but also where solutions towards sustainable development are needed. The purpose of upscaling the framework is to create a tool that facilitates decision-making in data-scarce contexts. We mapped SES by applying the framework to poverty alleviation and food security issues in the Volta River basin in Ghana and Burkina Faso. We found archetypical configurations of SES in space, and discuss where agricultural innovations such as water reservoirs might have a stronger impact at increasing food availability and therefore alleviating poverty and hunger. We conclude by outlining how the method can be used in other SES comparative studies

Schematic of the generalizability of the social-ecological patches.

<p>The dashed arrows indicate suggested new social-ecological patches that were not included by Sinare and colleagues [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref023" target="_blank">23</a>]. The crossed arrow connected to fallow indicates the failure to extrapolate this patch using remotely sensed data (for explanation see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#sec008" target="_blank">Results</a>). Social-ecological patches in dashed boxes were not mapped in the current study, either because they are additions to the original categorization or because it was impossible with the available data.</p

Schematic of work flow for the developed hybrid classification method.

<p>The data layers used include the red, near infrared and mid-infrared bands of the Landsat 8 OLI scenes (bands 4, 5 and 7); Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI; [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref052" target="_blank">52</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref053" target="_blank">53</a>]); and Tasseled Cap Transformation (TCT), an index that compresses multispectral Landsat data into the three bands brightness, greenness and wetness [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref054" target="_blank">54</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref055" target="_blank">55</a>]. To define the spectral signatures of some of the social-ecological patches, we used mean and standard deviations (st.d.) as well as the M statistic (a measure of spectral separability between classes; [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref056" target="_blank">56</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref057" target="_blank">57</a>]) for the different patch calibration points in all data layers. For implementation of the method, three GIS softwares were used: ArcMap [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref058" target="_blank">58</a>], ENVI [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref043" target="_blank">43</a>] and Google Earth.</p

Maps of social-ecological patches for study area 1 and 2.

<p>Urban land and water is a land cover, but not a social-ecological patch.</p

Description of social-ecological patches and their contribution to livelihood benefits.

<p>a) Social-ecological patches and characteristics of their ecosystem services generation; b) Relative contribution of the social-ecological patches found in the current study to the five identified livelihood benefits. Original scores are means from 36 focus groups conducted by Sinare and colleagues [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref023" target="_blank">23</a>]. Scores here are adapted from the original work, based on feedback during fieldwork conducted for this paper, to better represent per unit area contribution of social-ecological patches (for detailed description, see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.s005" target="_blank">S1 Text</a>). Figure partly based on Sinare and colleagues [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019#pone.0192019.ref023" target="_blank">23</a>] under a CC BY license, with permission from the authors, original copyright 2016.</p

The spatial distribution of livelihood benefits.

<p>Maps of the distribution of the five livelihood benefits (a-e) in study area 1 and study area 2 were generated using the social-ecological patch maps and the weighted livelihood benefit scores. The heat maps (f) were generated by adding all separate livelihood benefit maps into one composite map. The heat maps show the provision of multiple livelihood benefits, with high scores suggesting highly multifunctional parts of the landscape.</p

Knowledge co-production in the Helge a catchment : a comparative analysis

Addressing sustainability challenges in landscape management requires processes for co-producing usable knowledge together with those who will use that knowledge. Participatory futures methods are powerful tools for attaining such knowledge. The applications of such methods are diverse and understanding the intricacies of the knowledge co-production process is important to further develop these research practices. To improve participatory futures methods and contribute to systematic and critical reflections on methodology, we present a comparative analysis of four research projects that applied participatory futures methods in the same study area. Conducted between 2011 and 2020, these projects aimed to co-produce knowledge about the future provision of ecosystem services in the Helge a catchment area in southern Sweden. For structuring the post-hoc, self-reflexive analysis, we developed a framework dividing the knowledge co-production process into three dimensions: settings, synthesis and diffusion. We based the analysis on documentation from the projects, a two-step questionnaire to each research team, a workshop with co-authors and interviews with key participants. The comparison highlights steps in project decision-making, explicit and implicit assumptions in our respective approaches and how these assumptions informed process design in the projects. Our detailed description of the four knowledge co-production processes points to the importance of flexibility in research design, but also the necessity for researchers and other participants to adapt as the process unfolds