ACT Publication No. 02- 16

Ecological Systems and Multitier Human Organization

Emilio F. Moran, Elinor Ostrom and J. C. Randolph

Reprinted from:

Knowledge Management, Organizational Intelligence and Learning, and Complexity, ed. L. Douglas Kiel, in Encyclopedia of Life Support

Systems (EOLSS). Oxford, U.K.: developed under the auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers.

Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environme ital Change Indiana University, Student Building 331, 701 E. Kirkwood Ave., 47405-71 00, U.S.A. Phone: (81 2 ) 855-61 81, Fax: (81 2) 855-3000, Email: act@indiana.edu, internet: www.indiana.edu/-act

Search Print this chapter Cite this chapter

ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AND MULTI-TIER HUMAN ORGANIZATION

Emilio F. Moran Department of Anthropology, and Center for the Stua) of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, USA

Elinor Ostrom Department of Political Science, and Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, USA

J. C. Randolph School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, USA

Keywords: forests, institutions, choice, decision making, comparison, tiers, levels, scale, measurement

Contents

1. Some Definitions and Assumptions 2. Human Choice 3. The Structure of Action Situations 4. Tiers of Decision-Making Units and their Direct and Indirect Impacts 5. Processes, Measurement, Aggregation, and Comparisons 6. Conclusions Acknowledgements Related Chapters Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches

Summary

In order to study changes in the extent, composition, structure, and function of forest ecosystems, one needs to examine not only the ecological system, but also how socioeconomic factors affect human behavior and outcomes. Forest ecosystems are affected by many social, economic, and political factors. Human-induced causes of both deforestation and afforestation occur at multiple levels. Population growth can occur in one particular community or in a large region. Property rights may be well-defined in one region, but not in another. International trade affects the market price of many commodities, but the particular price received by farmers may also depend on government taxes and subsidies or the infrastructure provided in a specific community. Thus, adopting a multilevel approach is essential for understanding human impacts on forests. In this chapter, we present an initial effort to develop a multilevel theory of human action impacting over time on the extent and composition of forests and a strategy for such research.

1. Some Definitions and Assumptions 9 No single measure of forest health or value conveys full information about the condition or rate of change of any particular forest or set of forests. We use the term "forest conditions" to mean a suite of evaluative measures that together provide a composite picture of the current physical, biological, and economic value of a forest, as well as the rates of change in these values. Among the measures included in the concept of forest conditions are the density, biomass, basal area, diversity, species composition, economic and subsistence value, extent, shape, fragmentation, and rates of destruction, growth, removal, and regrowth of forests.

Forest conditions are dependent on both human decisions and on physical and biological processes. Human decisions directly and indirectly affect forest conditions. Direct actions result in an immediate impact on a particular forest. When a team working for a timber firm harvests a stand of timber, when a subsistence farmer clears a forest patch in order to plant manioc, or when a class of school children plant and protect tree seedlings, specific individuals are directly affecting the extent and shape of a particular forest, its rate of destruction or growth, and perhaps the species composition of that forest. These changes also may affect its economic and subsistence value. Indirect actions affecting forest conditions are mediated by other transactions between the person taking the indirect action and the person taking the related direct actions. The construction of dams, highways, and other types of physical infrastructure that directly affect forest conditions and their uses typically results in significant indirect effects. When individuals decide to build or purchase houses and furniture, to buy stock in certain multinational corporations, or even to buy coffee, bananas, or particular brands of ice cream, they indirectly affect conditions in forests that may be located nearby or across the globe from where they live. Changes in population density or its spatial distribution also indirectly affect forest conditions. Whether these changes affect forest conditions in a positive or negative manner depends on how the opportunities in a local setting and the choices of particular sets of individuals are mediated by institutions and demographic factors.

Forest conditions are simultaneously affected by physical factors such as solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, the chemical composition of the soil, and topography, as well as by a wide diversity of biological phenomena such as seed dispersal, competition, and herbivory. These physical and biological factors affect forest conditions at multiple spatial and temporal scales, as do anthropogenic changes.

In analyzing human decisions as they impact on forest conditions, we assume that:

1. Human decisions occur within tiers of decision-making units that extend from an individual to international organizations. 2. Within all tiers of decision making, fallible individuals make decisions that are intended to increase net benefits to themselves and potentially to others. 3. Individuals learn from their experiences and from culturally transmitted experiences. 4. Human decisions at all tiers are affected by the cultural values of the individuals, the resources they possess, the information they obtain, the incentives and disincentives they face, the internal learning and choice processes used, and the time horizon invoked.

5. Decisions at any one tier affect the information, incentives, and time horizon (and, perhaps the cultural values, resources, and internal choice processes) of others at that tier, at present and future time periods. 6. Decisions at any one tier frequently but not necessarily affect the cultural values, resources, information, incentives, internal choice processes, and time horizon invoked at other tiers. Thus, human choice is interdependent within tiers and across time and space. Impacts may be horizontal, upward, and downward. 7. Decisions at any one tier directly or indirectly affect forest conditions measured or aggregated at other tiers. 8. Physical and biological processes also affect the information, the incentives, and the time horizon that are used in human choice as well as being affected by human choice.

2. Human Choice e In the second, third, and fourth assumptions listed above, we self-consciously adopt a conception of human choice that views fallible humans as seeking goals perceived to be of net positive benefit to themselves, and potentially others, but limited in their success by the information they possess, the incentives they face, the time horizon they use, and their culturally constrained learning and choice-making processes. This conception is consistent with a large body of theoretical work in the bounded rationality and anthropological tradition. All individuals making choices are viewed as fallible learners whether they are high-level officials with Ph.D. degrees and years of experience, or landless peasants with no education trying to eke out a subsistence for their families.

Whether fallible learners make good choices for themselves and for others depends not only on their values, but also on the informatibn they possess and the internal learning and choice processes they have developed. Education and experience affect the levels and type of information and the heuristics andlor modes of analysis used in making decisions, in learning about the structure of the world, and in understanding how actions are linked to outcomes. Knowing who to trust, who is a group member, and who. has shown group solidarity affects the strategies that individuals adopt, including positive or negative reciprocity. Rules related to information flow (e.g., who must be informed about actions taken and forest conditions) as well as to the, payoffs received by participants, also affect what individuals learn about the situations they face. All individuals may or may not have the relevant. information they need to make effective decisions in a particular setting. Officials may or may not have the relevant information and appropriate modes of analysis needed to determine sustainable development practices for all forest ecosystems present in many governmental jurisdictions. One would expect a higher probability of success when officials are making decisions that affect a limited range of forest ecosystems with which they are already deeply familiar as a result of years of prior experience. Similarly, a landless family may or may not have the relevant information and appropriate modes of learning and analysis needed to determine whether migration from one region to another would improve their lifes chances.

Because it is extremely difficult to understand enough about particular decision makers that affect forest conditions through direct and indirect actions, we utilize a general conception of human behavior in our theoretical work. We can then draw on a variety of models of individual choice ranging from agents using very rough heuristics and having limited access

to relevant information, all the way to "hyper-rational" individuals who have complete information relevant to a situation and who have learned how to undertake analysis so as to maximize summed, quantitative goals. We view all of these models as potentially usehl in an effort to understand human choice in complex, interdependent worlds. In modeling global change phenomena, however, it will frequently be necessary to use models that make many fewer assumptions about the internal knowledge and calculation capabilities of individuals.

In many instances, individual choices are aggregated within corporate bodies such as private firms, government agencies, local communities governed by elders, and nongovernmental organizations. A frequent technique to simplify analysis is to treat such corporate actors as if they were single decision makers. We adopt this convention in many of our analyses. We examine the internal incentive structures for some corporate actors so as to better understand the likely actions to be taken by such actors. In our efforts to measure the structure of situations in which individuals make decisions that impact on forest conditions, we focus on those aspects of structure which have repeatedly been shown to affect the type of decisions that individuals make. In the next section, we briefly describe the variables that we utilize to analyze a wide diversity of situations.

3. The Structure of Action Situations 4 l When individuals make choices that either directly or indirectly affect forest conditions, they do so in the context of other individuals who are holding positions of various types (landowner, squatter, or governmental forest manager). Each individual in these positions has available to them an array of actions they may take (clear land, plant with selected species, harvest timber, sell or buy commodities, etc.) within a specified time period. In some cases, individuals must gain the agreement of others, and thus have less direct control over the actions they can take. These actions produce outcomes, such as the amount of forested land, nature and amount of commercial crop production, or conversion of forest to subsistence agriculture or pasture, etc. Individuals have diverse levels of information about their own actions and those of others (and, even who else is part of the interaction), about the perceived benefits and costs of different actions, and about how actions are linked to produce outcomes for participants. The italicized words are the universal elements that institutional analysts use in analyzing how the structure of these situations affects individual actions and how these actions jointly produce outcomes,. In addition, one needs to know whether the participants in such situations are facing a decision that is unlikely to be repeated, such as migration from urban slums to the frontier, or will be repeated indefinitely, such as buying and selling cdmmodities at a local farmers market.

Situational analysis is at the core of explanations offered by analysts for the actions and outcomes observed in diverse settings. One tries first to identify the structure of a situation its participants in positions who choose actions that are linked to outcomes in light of the information they possess and the likely costs and benefits they face. When the structure of the situation is such that everyone can be better off if they select some strategies rather than others a pure coordination problem it'is challenging to explain why some groups achieve better outcomes than others. Most of the relevant problems related to human uses of forests are not this benign. Many of the situations of interest will involve some aspects of "social dilemmas" and "collective action problems." Social dilemmas exist when substantial gains could be achieved for a group, but each individual 'has an opportunity to seek a private gain at a cost to the group achieving a higher outcome. The collective action problem involved is

how to overcome these temptations that undermine the achievement of higher returns for the group.

Having identified the structure of a situation, the analyst next tries to understand how this structure is affected by physical and biological variables, by the structure of the surrounding community and economy, and by the specific rules in use. The expected benefits of planting tree crops or harvesting mature trees, for example, depend on (1) the soils, climate, and location of the decision maker; (2) the resulting topography, climate, and soils; (3) the shared values held by those considered to be part of the decision-makers community; and (4) the rules in use specifying what may or may not be planted or harvested. Because the variables that affect the structure of a situation are scale dqxndent,. as one moves across levels of action, the. relevant physical and biological world, human community, and set of relevant rules changes.

While situations are normally analyzed separately, they are linked together in complex chains in the ongoing world. The linkages among diverse situations are particularly important to understand when studying processes of deforestation or reforestation, because the outcomes of one situation tend to spill out or spill in to many other situations. Consequently, it is essential to understand how they are linked across space and within particular time frames as well as across spatial and temporal scales.

4. Tiers of Decision-Making Units and their Direct and Indirect Impacts e While the number of tiers of decision-making units that may affect forest conditions in a particular location may be quite numerous, we will broadly group them into five tiers:

1. International conferences, international regimes, multinational corporations, and international NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) making decisions that affect commodity and land use distributions as well as rules related to commodities, land use, and forest conditions. 2. National governments, powerful groups, for-profit firms, and NGOs making decisions that affect commodities and land use distributions as well as rules related to commodities, land use, and forest conditions. 3. Regional governments, powem groups, for-profit firms, and NGOs making decisions that affect commodities and land use distributions as well as rules related to commodities, land use, and forest conditions. 4. User groups, settlements, and small businesses making decisions that affect commodities and land use distributions as well as rules related to commodities, land use, and forest conditions. 5. Individuals and households making decisions about location, fertility, migration, planting, harvesting, and other relevant activities.

Decisions made in situations located at any of these five tiers may have a horizontal impact on decisions made in situations located at the same level or at any of the other four levels. For example, the adoption of a particular international treaty, such as the Montreal Protocol limiting the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), affects the decisions of multinational corporations such as DuPont and the Imperial Chemical Industries regarding which chemicals to produce. Decisions made at this "global level" affect decisions at all other levels, such as individual choice of a refrigerant. At the 1992 United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, decisions were made concerning the importance of protecting the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands. These provisions have been invoked in many national and regional governmental decisions that then impact on decisions at a community and individual level. All research programs have to make fundamental decisions about what variables they will attempt to explain and what variables they will take as givens.

In the fifth tier the individual level empirical research will focus on decisions related to primary processes that have a direct impact on forest conditions along with physical and biological characteristics. The physical characteristics of a location include variables such as temperature, precipitation, soil fertility, slope, aspect, and elevation. The biological characteristics include the structure and functions of the species that live in a location.

We attempt to explain why households characterized by variables such as income, land tenure, family size and composition, and land ownership patterns make particular patterns of decisions that affect forest conditions. In its simplest form, decisions made at this level can be represented by Figure 1. Among the many relevant decisions made at this tier are decisions about family size; amount of land cleared; speed of rotation among agricultural plots; use of commercial or organic fertilizers; planting of trees; choice of firewood, charcoal, or other sources of fuel; or possible migration to a city to earn wage labor income.

Figure 1 : One tier of decision making

But individual decisions rarely occur in isolation. Individuals live in locations that are characterized by social, economic, biological, and physical opportunities and constraints. Thus, in order to explain decisions made at the fifth tier, one needs to understand what is happening at the fourth tier the community level. This more complex picture is represented in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Two tiers of decision making

In this multilevel framework, community characteristics include such variables as the history of a location, its geographic location in relation to large urban centers or major roads, socioeconomic factors, demographic trends, cultural norms shared by most community residents, degree of cultural heterogeneity, types of educational opportunities available, number and types of local business and philanthropic organizations, and structure of local government. Further, the kind of shared information present in a community about the value of the forest as a generator of ecological services, about various agroforestry technologies, and about their political efficacy and authority also affect decisions made at this level. We are interested in how such groups overcome a wide diversity of collective action problems

associated with the governance and management of forest resources. Some groups at this level will invest heavily in forms of social capital, which lead toward the development of common norms or enforced rules affecting decisions made at the household level. Others will not. The relevant decisions made at a community level may include at least the following:

What land is designated to be harvested (or otherwise managed) by units larger than individuals? Who is authorized to use this land? Who can participate in making rules about use and investment in this land? What kinds of harvesting and investment rules have been made? What kinds of harvesting and investment decisions are actually made? Who monitors and enforces these rules and what is their legal status? What kindsiof sanctions are imposed for violations of these rules?

At this level, decisions are made by groups of individuals rather than single individuals. We will attempt to understand both the impact of the structure of community organization(s) on the decisions made by groups related to primary processes, as well as their investments or lack of investment in methods to overcome collective action problems.

At the third tier the regional level we find fewer actors who are taking direct action that impacts on particular forests. We find many more individuals and groups whose actions have an indirect impact because they affect the structure of incentives of those who are operating at the fourth and fifth tiers. Here we are interested again in explaining the kinds of actions taken, and particularly the kinds of rules and policies adopted since they have a major impact on the fourth and fifth tiers. Among the many relevant decisions at a regional level are those made by NGOs, state government agencies, and commercial f m s . What legislation related to the use of forests is passed and enforced by state governments? Which forest commodities are commercially exploited by larger commercial f m s ? What technical services do regional NGOs provide local communities?

At the first and second tiers the international and national levels many decisions are made that impact on the primary processes occurring at the fourth and fifth tiers. At national or international levels, decisions are made with regard to the role of the central government in local affairs, the imposition or not of international quotas, and whether local economies are shielded or not from world commodity prices. If one adds these three tiers to a simplified picture of how decisions impact on forest conditions, one arrives at the highly simplified (but more complex) scheme represented in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Five tiers of decision making

There are many types of decisions involved in the processes that affect forest conditions; thus, a single theory or model of this complex set of human decisions is not realistic.

Individual studies will usually examine a subset of decision processes. Drawing on the concepts of hierarchy theory in ecology, one can develop explanations based on what processes are occurring at a focal level (level 0) by understanding mechanisms at the level below (level -I), and the constraints and opportunities of the level above (level +I).

When focusing on the individual as a focal level, the level below becomes the internal structure and process of individual choice. The level above becomes the community tier of decision making. In order to explain decisions at this level, one has to use the assumptions about human behavior listed above to generate and test predictions about the likely behavior of individuals. Constraints and opportunities on household decision making come directly from the characteristics of the community in which an individual or a household is located. Further constraints and opportunities may come from the regional, national, and international levels as these impact on a community. If one shifts up to the community level as a focal level, the level below becomes individual characteristics and decisions while the level above becomes the decisions made by regional organizations and authorities (with national and inter-national organizations and authorities also impacting in a more indirect manner).

Understanding the impact of national policies on the actions of individuals and communities is extremely important. Population pressure is an important factor influencing the sustainability of natural resources, but population pressure is less important than the overall policy framework. Credit policies for cattle ranchers plus government investments in roads fueled deforestation in Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s. Since the particular processes that affect deforestation may vary from location to location, simply calling for better national policies may be ineffective or worse in some locations, while highly efficacious in others. Thus, examining how mixtures of policies affect outcomes will be an important objective of this research.

Since few research programs have adopted a multilevel approach to human decision making as it affects forest conditions, we face many theoretical, methodological, and empirical puzzles in this effort.

5. Processes, Measurement, Aggregation, and Comparisons fP Human decisions and physical and biological processes occur at many spatial scales that we group into local, landscape, regional, and continental scales. At each level there are processes that can. be measured at that level and potentially at other levels through aggregation, and there are comparisons that can be made to test hypotheses about causal processes.

At a local scale, the processes involve:

individual decisions within households, communities, or divisions of larger decision- making units as impacted by decisions of others at the same or higher tiers; and small-scale biological and physical processes such as species growth and reproduction, photosynthesis, decomposition, nutrient uptake and release, and meteorological processes affecting solar radiation and water availability as these are impacted by biological and physical processes occurring at -larger scales.

To understand these processes, measurements must be made at a local scale for an adequate sample of sites in a location. This sampling must include. similar sites representing the typical patterns of forest conditions present at the location. In many cases there may be additional, adjacent sites that are "outliers," which represent interesting and potentially important forest habitats of interest to the local population, or where the outcome of human actions has left a very different imprint upon the forest. From these samples of sites, useful comparisons can be made across households, farms, and forest stands; across human communities; and across categories of human action such as migrant populations, communal tenure systems, and forest conservation.

Local-level processes provide a rich array of variables to explore how decisions about forest uses are made. Differences in the age and gender composition of households structure how much labor is available within a household, and thus how much labor can be used to substitute for capital, and how constrained such labor might be by other competing obligations. Wealth, in turn, can either substitute for labor, or it can become a force on its own to bring about rapid change. In traditional communities, wealthy families may be conservative in their use of wealth to transform forests because they are more concerned' with maintaining their wealth and status, while in upwardly mobile and frontier communities, wealth can lead to rapid environmental change because initial wealth is seen as a means of further capital accumulation to ensure long-term wealth and status.

Local land tenure is one of the most important factors affecting aspects of local land use. The security of tenure may influence short-term versus long-term strategies of land use. But equally important is the history of this tenure and the perceived security of its status. Where land rights have been contested, and where violence has been used to obtain those rights, it is more likely that strategies will be short-term in nature due to the doubts of the local community as to their ability to guarantee that the products of their long-term investments of labor and capital will be vested in their descendants.

Religion and ethnicity may, in some cases, be very important to the decision-making processes of local people. Whether forests are seen as embodying, or being the home of, spirits can greatly influence how a community uses its forest resources. Religion and ethnicity embody values and traditions that often include valuation of natural resources and attitudes toward proper use. These may not always be followed, but provide a normative set of rules that local people take into account, and that may act as a brake on other incentives present in their lives to act in contradiction to such values.

At a landscape level, the processes involve:

decisions by large private and public actors as impacted by decisions of others at other tiers; the aggregation of decisions by individual households and communities; and landscape level biological and physical processes affected by species composition, climate, and geomorphology.

To understand these processes, two strategies may be followed: aggregating the site data to a landscape level, or collecting data sets at the landscape level itself. Using remotely-sensed data (aerial photos, satellite digital data, radar imagery), it is possible to obtain considerable landscape-level information about forest types, their areal extent, and the spatial and temporal distribution of land cover, topography, biomass, water availability, and

transportation networks. The first step in data collection at this level is an unsupervised classification of land cover to determine the discrete classes present using the digital numbers fiom satellite imagery, such as the Landsat Thematic Mapper, and by rectification to reflectance values. These data can be fixher enhanced and refined with the use of aerial photos and radar imagery. These regional data can be an excellent guide to fieldwork, to help design sampling of sites, and to ensure that the local and community site-level studies are truly representative of the landscape and the land cover change processes of interest. When combined with site-specific forest mensuration, field-level geocorrection, and ground truthing using a global positioning system (GPS), the level of accuracy of the higher tier of analysis is increased by incorporating more detailed information. Then a supervised classification of the image can be produced to determine types of land cover. For example, if a landscape contains 60% tropical deciduous forests and 40% tropical moist forests, field samples can be selected to represent these proportionalities, or if 95% of the tropical deciduous forests are heavily used by humans, but only 20% of the tropical moist forests are, the sampling strategy can be further modified to understand why the communities focus more on deciduous rather than moist forests in their land use. At the site-specific level, soil analysis can determine differences in texture or nutrient availability. Forest inventory can determine species composition, tree size, age, and biomass, as well as local topographic effects. Finally, individual and household surveys could determine if there is an association of moist forests with dangerous spirits and richer hunting resources, or the ownership of the moist forests by a powerful family or clan.

At a national or regional level, the processes involve:

decisions by private and public actors at this tier of decision making as impacted by decisions of others at other tiers; the aggregation of decisions by individual households, communities, local governments, private firms at lower tiers; and . large, often continental scale, biological and physical processes operating fiom seasonal to geological time scales.

To understand these processes, some measurements made at a local and landscape level can be aggregated to a national or regional level for some.purposes, but other measurements with coarser resolution may not be necessary for national or regional levels. Useful comparisons can be made across nations, regions, or decision-making units located within different countries or regions. At this level, population data are reasonably available, although variable in quality. The decadal census provides a comprehensive time-series source of information at the county, regional, and national levels, not only on household composition but on spatial distribution, major economic activities, institutions, and ethnicity. Linking the national census to remotely-sensed imagery is currently an interest of a number of investigators.

6. Conclusions

Each tier of organization focuses on different types of human interaction and gives priority to different variables in explaining the measurable variables at that scale of aggregation or disaggregation. Temporal variability, too, varies across levels in its magnitude and rates of change. Generational change is more likely to explain processes at higher levels of

aggregation than at the level of the household, although even at this level, concerns with production and reproduction across generations may play significant roles.

Focusing on forest ecosystems provides a natural comparative laboratory for examining the complex interactions between human actions and ecological outcomes and their feedbacks. Human decisions, at any one of the five levels of analysis, play a central role in shaping the condition of forests. These decisions, while rational, are constrained by cultural values, the quantity and quality of the information available to them, the incentives offered, and the learning and choice-making routines that they have been socialized into using. These individual decisions occur withii situations where these same individuals act as members of institutions at one (e.g., family) or multiple levels (family and city environmental commission) of aggregation, wherein synchrony andlor conflict may be present in the incentives, values, and culture of the respective institutions within which the decision occurs.

Our efforts to understand why households, communities, and regions make the decisions that they do with regard to the quantity and quality of their forest ecosystems have led to a set of methods, as approaches to measurement, and for testing a number of propositions. These methods have come fiom the social, biological, and physical sciences. They have been brought together in the interest not only of addressing the questions of interest to this research, but as an experiment in how these sciences' methods can be adjusted and integrated to work in as parsimonious a fashion as possible in addressing the complex processes encompassed by global environmental change occurring at levels from local to global.

Acknowledgments fP We wish to thank the National Science Foundation (Grant # SBR-9521918) for its support of the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC). We also wish to thank the many CIPEC colleagues who participated in the discussion of earlier versions of this chapter.

Related Chapters .. 4 l Click Here To View The Related Chapters

Glossary 4 l Collective action: the process of facilitating closure toward common interests or the overcoming of blockages which undermine the achievement of high group returns from a contemplated action. Heuristic: a short-hand rule of thumb which facilitates decision making, especially in pedantic, repetitive situations. Such rules are often based on past experience coupled with inductive reasoning. Rationality: that quality ascribed to decision makers who possess complete information relevant to a situation, and employ logical and effective analysis to arrive at a decision which maximizes the attainment of their goals. Remotely-sensed data: data collected fiom aerial photos, satellite imagery, or radar imagery which portray spatial and temporal characteristics of land cover, topography, biomass, water

availability, and transportation networks. Can be used directly or stored for later use and analysis.

Bibliography 4P Allen T. F. H., and T. W. Hoekstra. (1992). Toward a Unified Ecology, 384 p. New York: Columbia University Press. [A major work on hierarchy theory at the basis of levels of analysis thinking with a forum on ecological organization.]

Brown K., and D. W. Pearce, eds. (1994). The Causes of Tropical Deforestation, 355 p. Vancouver, British Columbia: UBC Press. [An overview of the empirical evidence for various presumed causes of deforestation.]

Cancian F. (1972). Change and Uncertainty in a Peasant Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [A seminal study on the rationality of peasants and the social constraints they face due to social obligations, poverty, and climate uncertainties.]

Dawes R M. (1980). Social Dilemmas. Annual Review of Psychology 3 1 , 169-193. [The seminal article on social dilemmas establishing their pervasiveness.]

Durham W. H. (1995). Political ecology and environmental destruction in Latin America. The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America (eds. M. Painter and W. H. Durham), 249-264. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [One of the best discussions of the emerging field of political ecology. Proposes a model of deforestation in Latin America that emphasizes two feedback loops (capital accumulation and impoverishment) that promote deforestation.]

Gibson C., E. Ostrom, and T. K. Ahn. (1998). Scaling issues in the social sciences. A Report for the International Human Dimensions Program. IHDP Working Paper No. 1. Bonn, Germany: IHDP. [A basic review of scaling issues in economics, geography, political science, and urban studies.]

Johnson A. (1972). Individuality and experimentation in traditional agriculture. Human Ecology 1, 149-159. [Shows that traditional populations emerge in small-scale experimentation and that technological change occurs when the benefits significantly improve productivity without increasing risk.]

Lambin E. (1994). Modelling deforestation processes: A review. Trees Report. Ispra, Italy: Institute for Remote Sensing Applications. [A review of models of deforestation. Concludes that hybrid models are most likely to lead to advances in modeling. Advocates need more empirical research to improve models performance.]

Moran E. F. (1993). Deforestation and land use in the Brazilian Amazon. Human Ecology 21(1), 1-21. [Reviews history of land use and deforestation since the 1900s, especially the impact of roads and fiscal incentives. Proposes a set of policy actions to reduce deforestation.]

Ostrom E. (1986). An agenda for the study of institutions. Public Choice 48, 3-25. [This article provides a general framework for studying institutions.]

Ostrom E., R. Gardner, and J. M. Walker. (1994). Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. AM Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [An exposition of the basic problems facing those who are interested in sustainable resource management, drawing on theory, field studies, and experimental research.]

Pickett S. T. A. and M. L. Cadenasso. (1995). Landscape ecology: Spatial heterogeneity in ecological systems. Science 269 (July 21), 331-334. [An excellent overview of scaling issues in ecology.]

Wood C. and S. Perz. (1996). Population and land use change in the Amazon. Population Growth and Environmental Issues (eds. S . S. Ramphal and S. Sindit), 95-108. Westport, CT: Praeger. [Shows that it is not population growth that is the driving force for land use change. Rather, it is the concentration of land in the hands of those who choose extensive forms of land use to control land and labor, thereby accumulating capital.]

Wood C. and D. Skole. (1998). Linking satellite, census, and survey data to study deforestation in the Brazilian

Amazon. People and Pixels (4s. D. Liverman, E. F. Moran, R. Rindhs, and P. Stern). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. pasin-level assessment of land use change and deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Hypotheses are tested using the agricultural census and Landsat TM satellite data.]

Young 0. (1995). The problem of scale in human/environinent relationships. Local Commons and Global Interdependence: Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Two Domains (eds. R. Keohane and E. Ostrom), 27-45. London: Sage. [A provocative article raising the question of which social theories apply at multiple levels.]

Biographical Sketches 4 l Professor Moran's research currently combines remote-sensing methods, and field methods of data gathering and analysis, in the study of secondary succession in the Amazon Basin. Landsat TM satellite digital data are combined in Geographic Information Systems (GIs) with soils, vegetation, land use histories, yield, and carbon cycling to arrive at a detailed understanding of the processes responsible for accelerated or retarded rates of regrowth following deforestation. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NOAA, NASA, and the Midwestern Center of the National Institutes for Global Environmental Change in the past. Current support includes NSF, the population program at the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Students working with him have the opportunity to develop their own research or take part in ongoing projects that examine deforestation and afforestation processes in temperate and tropical forest ecosystems in the Western Hemisphere. Moran is the author of 6 books, 9 edited volumes and over 100 articles.

Professor Ostrom is interested in exploring how institutional rules affect the structure of action situations within which individuals face incentives, make choices, and jointly affect each other. Problems involving collective goods and common-pool resource systems, and how various types of institutions enhance or detract fiom the capabilities of individuals to achieve equitable, workable, efficient solutions are a central theoretical concern. In urban settings she has been interested in the problems of collective action where citizens face problems of crime, poor education, and deteriorating environmental conditions. She is also interested in the same problems as they relate to resource problems in the Third World, particularly problems of collective action related to forests, fisheries, grazing areas, agricultural lands, and water systems. A major study of institutions and forests is being initiated as part of an effort to study the interrelationships between local and global commons. Professor Ostrom is currently working with colleagues in several tropical countries to investigate the impacts of diverse institutional arrangements on forest conditions and on global environmental change. The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis emphasizes theory and its application to policy- related research. Research focuses on the effect of institutional arrangements upon the incentives that people face and consequently upon individuals' behavior. Both micro and macro analyses of institutions in diverse countries are conducted by Research Associates, Visiting Scholars, and Indiana University students.

Dr. Randolph is a forest ecologist. He teaches courses in forest ecology, global environmental change, and applications of geographic information systems and remote sensing in natural resources management. His research interests focus upon ecological aspects of global environmental change with particular interests in forestry and agriculture. Other research interests include carbon dynamics of temperate and tropical forests and physiological ecology of woody plants and small mammals. He has had fieldwork experience in Indiana, Tennessee, eastern Canada, eastern Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. Dr. Randolph is director of the Ph.D. in Environmental Science program. Since 1990 he has been Director of the Midwestern Regional Center of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change (NIGEC), sponsored by the Department of Energy.

To cite this chapter EmiIio F. Moran , Elinor Ostrom, J.C. Randolph, ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AND MULTI-TIER HUMAN ORGANIZATION, in Knowledge management, Organizational intelligence and Learning, and Complexity, fiom Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford ,UK, [http://www.eolss.net] [Retrieved February 3,20051

OCopyright 2004 Eolss Publishers. All rights reserved. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems

No. 01 -01 H. Habetl, S. Batterbury, and E.Moran. (2001). Using and shaping the land: a long term perspective. Land Use Policy 1811-8.

No. 01-02 E. Moran and E. Brondizio. (2001). Human ecology from space: ecological anthropology engages the study of global environmental change. In: Ecology and the Sacred: Engaging the Anthropology of Roy A. Rappaport. Edited by E. Messner and M. Lambeck. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Pp. 64-87.

NO. 01-03 F. Gurri, G. Pereira and E. Moran. (2001). Well-being changes in response to 30 years of regional integration in Maya populations from Yucatan, Mexico. American Journal of Human Biology. 13590-602

NO. 01 -04 T. Evans, A. Manire, F. de Castro, E. Brondizio and S. McCracken. (2001). A dynamic model of household decision- making and parcel level land cover change in the eastern Amazon. Ecological Modelling. 14395-1 13.