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Scale Relationships in the Interactions of Climate, Ecosystems, and Societies

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Forecasting in the Social and Natural Sciences

Abstract

Climates, ecosystems, and societies interact over a tremendous range of temporal and spatial scales. Scholarly work on forecasting climate impacts has tended to emphasize different questions, variables, and modes of explanation depending on the primary scale of interest. Much of the current debate on cause and effect, vulnerability, marginality, and the like stems from uncritical or unconscious efforts to transfer experience, conclusions, and in-sights across scales. This paper sketches a perspective from which the relative temporal and spatial dimensions of climatic, ecological, and social processes can be more clearly perceived, and their potential interactions more critically evaluated. Quantitative estimates of a variety of characteristic scales are derived and compared, leading to specific recommendations for the design of climate impact studies.

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  1. William C. Clark

    Present address: J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

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  1. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361, Laxenburg, Austria

    William C. Clark

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Kenneth C. Land

  2. N.C.A.R., Boulder, CO, USA

    Stephen H. Schneider

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Clark, W.C. (1987). Scale Relationships in the Interactions of Climate, Ecosystems, and Societies. In: Land, K.C., Schneider, S.H. (eds) Forecasting in the Social and Natural Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4011-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4011-6_14

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