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Ecosystems (2014) 17: 578589
DOI: 10.1007/s10021-013-9744-2
2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA)
Panarchy: Theory and Application
Craig R. Allen,1* David G. Angeler,2 Ahjond S. Garmestani,3
Lance H. Gunderson,4 and C. S. Holling5
1U.S. Geological Survey, Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583, USA;
2Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 7050, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden; 3National Risk Management Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 26 W. Martin Luther King Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45268, USA; 4Department of Environmental Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA; 5Resilience Center, Vancouver Island, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
ABSTRACT
The concept of panarchy provides a framework that characterizes complex systems of people and nature as dynamically organized and structured within and across scales of space and time. It has been more than a decade since the introduction of panarchy. Over this period, its invocation in peer-reviewed literature has been steadily increasing, but its use remains primarily descriptive and abstract.Here, we discuss the use of the concept in the literature to date, highlight where the concept may
be useful, and discuss limitations to the broader applicability of panarchy theory for research in the ecological and social sciences. Finally, we forward a set of testable hypotheses to evaluate key propositions that follow from panarchy theory.
Key words: complex systems; discontinuities; novelty; regime; resilience; socialecological systems; transformations.
INTRODUCTION
Humans build mental models of complex systems to make their structures and dynamics tractable for scientic inquiry. Multidimensional, nonlinear processes and structures characterize complex systems, including ecological, social, or coupled social ecological systems. Nevertheless, these systems are amenable to simplication. Panarchy is a conceptual model that describes the ways in which complex systems of people and nature are dynamically organized and structured across scales of space and time (Gunderson and others 1995; Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling and others 2002). Panarchy uses a systems approach to understand ecosystem dynamics and emphasizes hierarchical structuring.
However, panarchy is different from typically envisioned hierarchies in that control is not just exerted by larger-scale, top-down processes, but can also come from small scale or bottom-up processes. Additionally, the dynamics of renewal and collapse within-scale domains, that is, adaptive cycles differ from the more static view...