Socioecological Systems and Forest Landscape Restoration

Abstract

Social and ecological systems are in constant interaction. Focusing on both systems and their interactions provides a more balanced way of addressing forest landscape restoration (FLR). In this chapter, a range of forest and land management interventions, applied within FLR, are outlined and analysed through a social-ecological system (SES) lens to identify how opportunities, trade-offs and ideas of resilience interact within ecological and social systems. SES frameworks offer a means to analyse combined ecological and social systems and recognize the interactions between them. An SES framework can provide the means to dissect complexity and combine the disciplines to understand different variables and how they are related. A balance between ecological and social resilience seems possible in certain situations if the landscape mosaic includes a combination of restoration approaches, with patch-specific actions linked to a wider landscape effort.