Copyright © 2014 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Hanspach, J., T. Hartel, A. I. Milcu, F. Mikulcak, I. Dorresteijn, J. Loos, H. von Wehrden, T. Kuemmerle, D. Abson, A. Kovács- Hostyánszki, A. Báldi, and J. Fischer. 2014. A holistic approach to studying social-ecological systems and its application to southern Transylvania. Ecology and Society 19(4): 32. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06915-190432 Research, part of a Special Feature on Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS): Knowledge for Sustainable Stewardship of Social-ecological Systems A holistic approach to studying social-ecological systems and its application to southern Transylvania Jan Hanspach 1 , Tibor Hartel 2 , Andra I. Milcu 1 , Friederike Mikulcak 1 , Ine Dorresteijn 1 , Jacqueline Loos 1 , Henrik von Wehrden 3,4 , Tobias Kuemmerle 5 , David Abson 6 , Anikó Kovács-Hostyánszki 7 , András Báldi 7 and Joern Fischer 1 ABSTRACT. Global change presents risks and opportunities for social-ecological systems worldwide. Key challenges for sustainability science are to identify plausible future changes in social-ecological systems and find ways to reach socially and environmentally desirable conditions. In this context, regional-scale studies are important, but to date, many such studies have focused on a narrow set of issues or applied a narrow set of tools. Here, we present a holistic approach to work through the complexity posed by cross-scale interactions, spatial heterogeneity, and multiple uncertainties facing regional social-ecological systems. Our approach is spatially explicit and involves assessments of social conditions and natural capital bundles, social-ecological system dynamics, and current development trends. The resulting understanding is used in combination with scenario planning to map how current development trends might be amplified or dampened in the future. We illustrate this approach via a detailed case study in southern Transylvania, Romania, one of Europe’s most significant biocultural refugia. Our goal was to understand current social-ecological dynamics and assess risks and opportunities for sustainable development. Our findings show that historical events have strongly shaped current conditions and current development trends in southern Transylvania. Moreover, although external drivers (including EU policies) set the general direction of regional development trajectories, local factors, including education, leadership, and the presence of bridging organizations, can enhance or counteract their effects. Our holistic approach was useful for generating an in-depth understanding of a regional social-ecological system and could be transferred to other parts of the world. Key Words: ecosystem service bundles; landscape sustainability science; Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society; regional scale; Romania; scenario planning INTRODUCTION The Anthropocene is characterized by unprecedented, rapid, and uncertain socioeconomic and environmental changes (Schröter et al. 2005, Rockström et al. 2009). A major challenge for sustainability science is to identify plausible changes that may occur in the future of a given system, and identify ways to reach or maintain socially and environmentally desirable system states (Gibson 2006). The concept of social-ecological systems (also termed human-environment systems or coupled human and natural systems) highlights that people and nature are interconnected, with their inter-relationships constantly co- evolving, thus making them analytically inseparable (Folke 2006, Liu et al. 2007). Although social-ecological systems are characterized by dynamic complexity, many are fundamentally shaped by a relatively small number of variables (Walker et al. 2006). Identifying and investigating the relationships between such key variables reduces the often seemingly intractable complexity of the systems studied, allowing useful scientific and policy insights. Landscape and regional scales (spanning hundreds to thousands of square kilometers) have been suggested as particularly useful for studying social-ecological systems (Liu et al. 2007, Carpenter et al. 2012). Regions are also often the scale at which policy is implemented, and they represent institutional, social, and physical “spaces” that are tangible and meaningful for humans (Brown and Raymond 2007, Angelstam et al. 2013). However, most research to date has investigated future development pathways either at the global scale or at very fine scales (e.g., individual villages) while intermediate scales have been neglected (Rounsevell et al. 2012). Many studies that have been conducted at landscape or regional scales have focused on relatively narrow sets of issues or applied a relatively narrow set of methodological tools. Here, we present a holistic analytical approach to study the risks and opportunities facing social-ecological systems. This approach considers cross-scale interactions, spatial heterogeneity, and multiple uncertainties (Fig. 1), and could be usefully applied to a wide range of social-ecological systems worldwide. It systematically combines several tools, namely the documentation of system dynamics (Allison and Hobbs 2004, Liu et al. 2007), scenario planning (Enfors et al. 2008, Palomo et al. 2011), and spatial mapping (Anderson et al. 2009, Nelson et al. 2009). The documentation of system dynamics involves identifying the most important variables in a given system and evaluating (qualitatively or quantitatively) how they interact with one another (Walker and Salt 2006, Meadows 2009). It provides an understanding of the current state of a system and its functional relationships, but not necessarily of its plausible future pathways or people’s aspirations to alter the system. For this reason, we combine our assessment of systems dynamics with scenario planning, a foresight methodology specifically used to envision future pathways of a given system (Peterson et al. 2003, Biggs et al. 2010). Scenario planning provides a structured approach to identify different plausible developments for the future, typically to evaluate the possible outcomes of alternative management options (e.g., Henrichs et al. 2010, Palomo et al. 2011). Finally, because social- ecological changes in any given region are typically spatially heterogeneous, spatially explicit mapping offers additional 1 Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lüneburg, 2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Sapientia University, 3 Institute of Ecology, Faculty of Sustainability & Centre for Methods, Leuphana University Lüneburg, 4 Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, Austria, 5 Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 6 FuturES Research Center, Leuphana University Lüneburg, 7 MTA Centre for Ecological Research