Abstract
“The Great Acceleration” poses serious challenges to land managers, policy makers, and all who are interested in the global sustainability of socioecological systems. Methods that can effectively address the uncertainty of the future to allow more robust and adaptive planning and management are urgently needed. We present a case study from northeastern Minnesota to highlight how strategic foresight methods and landscape modeling can serve as complementary tools to generate divergent yet plausible participatory scenarios to ultimately model the potential impacts of these scenarios on fundamental ecosystem services over 50 years. The landscape scenarios generated from the scenario process ranged widely, from optimistic futures to dire outcomes; these scenarios were far more divergent than outcomes explored in a traditional factorial landscape modeling study. This greater range in possible futures leads to more useful model outputs to guide the decisions of planners, managers, and policymakers. Our study illustrates advantages of blending the power of multiple strategic foresight tools with landscape modeling to generate alternative future storylines that are enlightening (i.e., expanding the scope of possibilities), useful (via strong contrasts), and yet plausible (i.e., grounded by robust science and stakeholder perspectives). Strategic foresight methods such as horizon scanning can also be useful in on-going monitoring of landscapes to support adaptive management aimed at fostering sustainable futures. Combining these approaches enhances creativity and wide-ranging plausibility (strategic foresight) with science-based assessments of outcomes and trajectories (landscape modeling), increasing the likelihood of creating resilient, preferred futures.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 104798 |
| Journal | Landscape and Urban Planning |
| Volume | 237 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded in part by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI, Focus Area 5; Project Template #936: Planning Informed by Alternative Future Watershed Ecosystem Services).
Funding Information:
Many thanks to our participants who gave their time, expertise, and creativity to this project. We literally could not have done it without you. We further thank the Northeast Landscape Committee of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council for their assistance in developing our initial contact list from their communication network. Not all the research project team members are authors, but all were engaged and contributed meaningfully to this research: Jonathan Thompson, Brian Miranda, Jeffrey Suvada, Diana Karwan, and Zachary McEachran. Sincere thanks to the reviewers who gave their time and expertise to provide suggestions that greatly improved this paper. Paul Gobster and Andrew Tillman provided insightful pre-submission reviews while 3 blind reviewers engaged meaningfully and helpfully with our draft. Our thanks to everyone. The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or US Government determination or policy. Funding & Human Subjects Review, This work was funded in part by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI, Focus Area 5; Project Template #936: Planning Informed by Alternative Future Watershed Ecosystem Services). This study was reviewed by the University of Minnesota IRB, and deemed exempt (STUDY00010141).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023
Keywords
- Dinamica EGO
- Forest landscape dynamics
- Horizon scanning
- LANDIS-II
- Participatory scenarios
- Socioecological systems
