Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Human‐Environment Interactions in Forest Ecosystems
本书由Emilio Moran和Elinor Ostrom主编，探讨森林区域土地利用变化对全球环境的影响，强调跨学科合作与尺度问题，适合环境科学、地理学、社会学等研究者参考。
Moran, Emilio F. and Elinor Ostrom. Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Human Environment Interactions in Forest Ecosystems. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005, 504 pp., $83.00. Perhaps there has been no time in recent history where the interactions of humans on natural ecosystems and biological cycles have been so scrutinized and debated. Changes that at one time took centuries to observe are occurring in mere decades, the most notable being the buildup of greenhouse gases, and in particular, carbon in the atmosphere. The issues surrounding energy production are examples of the intertwined challenges that need to be addressed and solved if we are to achieve the goal of sustainable well-being for our generation and those that follow. The edited volume Seeing the Forest and the Trees (edited by Emilio Moran and Elinor Ostrom) falls in line with this trend and focuses on a related set of intertwined issues: the impacts that changes in land use in primarily forested regions have had on regional and global environmental change. Although by no means unique in its attention to global impacts, the editors have provided a consensus-building approach coupled with a vision and roadmap for interdisciplinary collaboration. Moran and Ostrom have utilized an opportunity to explore cross-cutting science and policy issues and in the process have engaged an impressive set of contributors from both the physical and selected social science disciplines, spanning nearly three generations of researchers. The breadth of involvement among these environmental and social scientists from many countries and locations brings the diversity of ideas, approaches, and case studies that is missing in less encompassing studies. The disciplines represented are primarily geography, anthropology, sociology, GIS areas, and environmental studies. Notably missing from this lineup, however, is a strong voice from the economics and natural resource economics disciplines. Thus, as an economist, I was interested in what impact this might have on both the methods and analysis for exploring human-environment interactions, and on the conclusions reached by the editors/authors. This volume is organized into four main parts followed by an epilogue. The chapters are focused on the methodological lessons on land use, forest transitions, and human-environment research woven into the empirical findings and policy implications regarding spatial and scale differences. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overall introduction to the issues and “theory” of the field of human-environment interactions. Summarized at the conclusion of Chapter 1, the lessons learned echo a very familiar and important theme for researchers dealing with human-environment interactions: “scale and context matters.” It matters in how we think about the theory, design the empirical approaches and data sets, and interpret the results. Thus, a commonality exists with much of the economics-based research on interdisciplinary environmental projects, which are also concerned with issues of scale and aggregation. The second chapter is a concise, well-written overview of the main theories of human-environment interactions and concludes with a plea to try not to be overly complex in designing theories. How often have we all suffered through the flow diagrams that have arrows going to each possible box and back! Once again, this is a common theme that emerges from economics research as well: striking a balance between complexity and parsimony is critical if we are to move beyond theory toward empirical analysis. The second part addresses the conceptual foundations for understanding the research on human-environment interactions in forest ecosystems. The three chapters can serve as a primer for graduate students interested in multidisciplinary research; the message reiterates, through carefully written arguments, the critical need to address spatial/scale dimensions. Chapter 4 addresses the challenging task of understanding the role of institutions and the forest transformations that have occurred. Perhaps the obvious answer to the question of what kind of institutions work best for sustainable forest management outcomes emerges—those that are flexible and able to adapt to change. Chapter 5 presents an excellent overview of the structure of forest ecology and gaining a basic understanding of forest ecosystems is paramount to productive interdisciplinary policy analysis. Perhaps a chapter on the economics of forestry would have provided a further dimension to policy analyses for addressing these human-environment interactions. The third part of the volume is on methods and how methods used by this research community are no longer the domain of a given discipline. Remote sensing, GIS, dynamic simulation modeling, and modeling are addressed in these chapters and discussed in terms of their inherent properties, limitations, and data needs. After reading these chapters, I am left with how “close and connected” the interdisciplinary approaches are, all of which bodes well for empirical analyses. Finally, the fourth part provides the case studies, and is perhaps the most interesting part to researchers. The individual case studies are of interest because of the rich attention to detail and empirical findings, but as a whole provide the basis for comparative analyses on human dimensions of global environmental change. Chapter 13, “A Meta-Analysis of Agricultural Change,” may be of particular interest to the readership of the AJAE due to its focus on observed changes in land-use patterns in sub-Saharan Africa contrasted with Latin America and East/Southeast Asia. Many conclusions emerge from this chapter: the call for minimum data sets and protocols for many key physical factors including climate, demography, the lack of detailed data on biophysical characteristics that may help to explain patterns of land-use change, and the over-reliance on qualitative information. Also, the authors highlighted the role of institutions and access to credit and infrastructure as key determinants for explaining agricultural change. Collaboration with economists on how to incorporate these variables into a more cohesive analysis of agricultural change may be a worthwhile next step. Oftentimes, researchers stop short of extending their experience to ask the “what next” question. In the final chapter in this volume, Emilio Moran tackles this head on: he reviews what are emerging questions and approaches that are likely to take center stage in the coming decade. The recognition that human activities can be a dominant influence and factor in what happens to the earth's ecosystem has been in the headlines nearly every day, and the IPCC report issued in February 2007 is perhaps the best evidence of this claim. Moran raises issues associated with methodological integration and the challenges associated with such tasks and returns to the importance of the issue of scale, both temporal and spatial, and the challenges of understanding different institutions and their abilities to adapt to changing external factors. A classic example of the latter is, of course, the need for our institutions to understand global environmental goods and how to set policy to deal with such vast spatial and inter-temporal landscapes. Moran concludes by emphasizing a need to set aside the disciplinary silos in favor of more interdisciplinary work. This volume clearly illustrates that interdisciplinary research does not mean sacrificing disciplinary rigor. Perhaps most striking to me is the need to provide better incentives within the academic research community to engage in these multidisciplinary studies, and the critical role for many social scientists, including economists. In conclusion, the editors have done a laudable job in raising the awareness of the challenges and need for many researchers to work together on environmental issues; and while I would have welcomed the perspective that a more structured economics component could have added to this overall effort, I am confident that economists who are interested in human-environment interactions and forestry ecosystems will be intrigued and hopefully motivated to engage with their colleagues across campus.