Investigating sustainability across scales through social-ecological land-use studies in LTSER platforms

Sustainability challenges are related to socio-ecological interactions that take place at different spatial and temporal scales. Processes at different scales are interlinked, so that place-based research - like the LT(S)ER approach in eLTER - needs to be embedded in larger, often global, contexts. This is all the more important today, as increasing geopolitical tensions, international conflicts and the increasingly frequent and severe effects of global warming are pushing the world towards a "divided world" scenario. For example, changing environmental conditions due to climate heating but also land-use change, pose major threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. Changes in their biophysical and socio-economic framework will force land users to rethink and adapt their land management strategies in terms of land cover and land-use intensity. To link societal and environmental drivers of land use change, we developed the land-use agent-based model (ABM) SECLAND. The model’s farm agents represent real-world actors who make decisions in pursuit of well-being, intrinsic motivation and global socioeconomic and political drivers for decision-making influencing their preferences for certain land-use strategies. We will present new simulations for the LTSER (Long-term socio-ecological research) region Eisenwurzen in Austria, for which we calibrated the model with quantitative census data, supplemented by qualitative data from interviews and workshops with stakeholders to represent the specific conditions of the study region. Model simulations produce spatially explicit parcel-level land use maps. Previous land-use trajectories proposed strong shifts toward organic and extensive agriculture as well as forest transition as result of (grass-) land abandonment. We refine these forecasts by focusing on farmers’ perception of extreme events as climate change threats and evaluate the effects of early climate change adaptation measures on future land management. Based on this research example we will discuss the power of such models for transformative research, linking the biophysical processes of land use change to actors, institutions and power relations. Such social ecology methods and tools are important for exploring the integration of social and natural sciences in studying the sustainability of globally embedded socio-ecological systems. The investigation of social-ecological research in an RI such as eLTER can thus make a crucial contribution to the integration of local, actor-centred and participatory research carried out in LTSER regions into larger-scale models and assessments.