Transhumance systems integration, AMOC boundary crisis, chaotic transients

An examination of how a systems thinking approach can integrate social and ecological components of transhumance. The potential for a boundary crisis in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation due to increased CO2 levels is also explored. Additionally, a principle of self-organization called 'Surviving by Serving' is introduced, suggesting components persist based on their utility to others within a complex adaptive system. Other topics include social-ecological-spatial frameworks for urban science and mapping social-ecological nexuses.

Systems thinking is being applied to integrate social and ecological components within transhumance systems. This approach helps understand the interactions in these complex settings, particularly in areas like the Nepal Himalayas, where research addresses a knowledge gap regarding their current status and significance.
Regarding climate systems, a study indicates that increased CO2 levels can lead to a boundary crisis where the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) attractor disappears through collision with an edge state. This crisis overshoot results in long chaotic transients influenced by a 'ghost state,' causing ensemble splitting in earth system models under time-varying forcing. The study, contributing to a theme issue on critical transitions, used an intermediate-complexity climate model to explore the AMOC stability landscape across varying CO2 concentrations. Its findings, based on dynamical systems theory, explain large ensemble variance and clarify 'stochastic bifurcations' in these models.
In complex adaptive systems, researchers proposed the 'Surviving by Serving' (SBS) principle: components persist if their outputs are utilized, while non-utilization promotes adaptation. A minimal multi-agent model demonstrated this principle, spontaneously forming functional interaction networks even without global objectives. The model exhibited stable transformation chains, core-periphery organization, and generated novel states, creating self-sustaining interaction networks without external selection pressures. This suggests functional utilization provides a simple, substrate-independent mechanism for organized structure emergence.
Within sustainability science, a social-ecological-spatial systems (SESS) framework has been proposed to integrate the built environment by introducing a spatial system domain encompassing morphology, materiality, and historicity. This addresses a common limitation where existing social-ecological systems studies often treat the built environment as background, as confirmed by a systematic review showing over 90% of urban social-ecological studies do not treat it as a dynamic system. Another study utilized fuzzy cognitive mapping and a participatory approach to analyze social-ecological nexuses in a Sri Lankan village tank cascade system, generating network graphs with centrality metrics to identify influential elements. An experiential learning tool, the resilience thinking walkshop, combines field prospecting with Holling's adaptive cycle framework to translate abstract resilience theory into tangible knowledge for socio-ecological-technological systems.
For organizational change, the Platform Thinking Journey, a managerial artifact, was developed through multi-firm collaboration to support platform transformation in incumbent firms. This artifact integrates a process model, bounded decision cycles, and a "phygital" support architecture. The research identified five design principles for platform transformation, including reframing from products to interactions and structuring processes into bounded decision cycles.
A chapter explores nature as a computational structure for a cognizer, integrating concepts like morphological computation and extended cognition.
A study uncovered directional interactions and causal architectures within the primate social brain related to social attention dynamics.
Regarding generative AI, a study identified four distinct user profiles among Chinese university students. Learning motivation predicts critical thinking gains and lower cognitive autonomy relinquishment, while offloading depth predicts increased relinquishment. A "high depth–high dependence" subgroup was also identified. Leading large language models demonstrate high accuracy on theoretical accounting questions but lower accuracy on practical tasks, though advanced models show performance improvement in accounting education.
Further research challenges the notion that transhumance grazing harms biodiversity, noting these systems provide household income and cultural value.
In education research, a gap exists in pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) studies for applied disciplines, which require different teaching approaches than 'pure' disciplines. Engineering education serves as a test case, where progress in implementing student-centered teaching lags. This research focuses on mechanisms of teaching practice realization in universities, employing Bourdieu's theoretical framework and a staged ethnographic methodology.

Sources

The socio-ecological impacts of structural changes in the transhumance system of the mountainous area of Nepal
Traditional social-ecological systems such as pastoralism can be subject to major and rapid changes, resulting in adverse social, economic, cultural and ecological impacts. Transhumance, a type of pastoralism based on seasonal and recurring movement of livestock has been undergoing unprecedented changes. In the high Himalayas, transhumance is a threatened system due to social-economic and cultural transformations brought by globalisation, shifts from subsistence agriculture (e.g. grazing) to multi-functional land use (e.g. tourism and biodiversity conservation), conservation policies and…
Global stability of the Atlantic overturning circulation: edge state, long transients and boundary crisis under CO2 forcing
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system, could transition to a weak state. Despite severe associated climate impacts, assessing the AMOC's response under global warming and its proximity to possible critical thresholds remains difficult. To understand future Earth system stability, a global dynamical view is needed beyond the local stability analysis associated with classical early-warning methods. Using an intermediate-complexity climate model, we explore the stability landscape of the AMOC for different atmospheric CO2 concentrations. We…
Surviving by Serving: Functional Relevance Drives Self-Organization in Complex Adaptive Systems
Complex adaptive systems often develop organized structures without centralized control. Yet the local mechanisms by which functional organization emerges and persists remain incompletely understood. Here we propose Surviving by Serving (SBS) as a general principle of self-organization: components persist as long as their outputs are utilized by other components, whereas prolonged non-utilization promotes adaptation and exploration. To investigate this idea, we introduce a minimal multi-agent model in which agents transform shared resources and receive only local feedback when their outputs…
Systematic review supports a spatial system framework for social ecological systems in urban sustainability science
The social-ecological systems framework, a foundation of sustainability science, faces a persistent challenge in urban contexts. Here we show that its origins in common-pool resource governance have contributed to the built environment being treated as background rather than as a system with its own configurational logic, materiality, and history. A systematic review of 630 articles shows that more than 90% of reviewed urban SES studies do not engage the built environment as a dynamic system and largely treat space instrumentally. Drawing on urban morphology, spatial production theory, and…
Mapping the Social–Ecological Nexus to Determine System Properties That Maintain Sustainability and Productivity in Village Tank Cascade Systems of Sri Lanka
The social–ecological nexus (SEN) offers a framework to capture the complex and dynamic interactions and interdependencies between human communities and the natural systems that support them. This study analyzed the SENs within a village tank cascade system (VTCS), a social–ecological system (SES) located in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The study adopted a participatory approach, combining fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to determine key SES properties of the VTCS. The FCM process identified 49 nodes (elements) and 434 edges (connections) within the study landscape that contribute to system…
Walkshop: Embodied Resilience Thinking Through Theory, Practice, Intuition, and Sharing
This paper presents the resilience thinking walkshop as an innovative experiential learning tool that engages with pluriversal ways of knowing socio-ecological-technological systems [SETS]. Applied to Barcelona's Collserola forest ecosystem, the methodology combines walking-based field prospecting with Holling's adaptive cycle framework to transform abstract resilience theory into tangible, embodied knowledge. The walkshop traces water heritage from urban wells to natural springs, enabling participants to directly observe and experience the adaptive cycles characterizing urban-nature…
Platform Thinking in Action: A design science research to bring the platform revolution in legacy firms
Digital platforms have become a dominant logic for value creation and innovation, yet legacy firms still struggle to translate platform principles into actionable organizational transformation. A central reason is cognitive: managers often mis-frame platforms as digital services rather than as ecosystem-based value architectures. This paper adopts a Design Science approach to develop and refine the Platform Thinking Journey, a composite managerial artifact that supports platform transformation in incumbent firms. Developed through a three-year, multi-firm collaboration within the Platform…
Causal Dynamics of Social Gaze in Primate Prefrontal-Amygdala Networks Revealed by Dynamic Bayesian Modeling
Social gaze is a fundamental channel of primate communication, shaping dynamic interactions and fostering mutual understanding. While prior studies have mapped the behavioral correlates of social gaze across the prefrontal-amygdala circuits, the causal architecture of these interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we develop an algorithm to integrate independently recorded sessions from male macaques into "super-sessions", validated using ground-truth synthetic data, enabling the reconstruction of simultaneous multi-area recordings aligned to matched gaze sequences. Applying Dynamic…
Exploring Cognition through a Morphological Info Computational Framework
Traditionally, cognition has been considered a uniquely human capability involving perception, memory, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. However, recent research shows that cognition is a fundamental ability shared by all living beings, from single cells to complex organisms. This chapter takes an info-computational approach (ICON), viewing natural structures as information and the processes of change in these structures as computations. It is a relational framework dependent on the perspective of a cognizing observer/cognizer. Informational structures are properties of the material…

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Full transcript

The seasonal migration of livestock, a practice thousands of years old, now confronts a web of modern social and ecological changes. Examining these interactions through a systems thinking lens is the focus of this issue from ComplexityPod. We begin with a study of transhumance in the Nepal Himalayas. This cycle, research examines how complex systems organize themselves, from basic principles up to global climate dynamics. One of those principles is called 'Surviving by Serving.' The idea is that a component within a system continues to exist only as long as its outputs are actually used by other components. So it's a kind of 'use it or lose it' feedback loop. If a part's output isn't being utilized, it has to adapt and find a new function, or it disappears. Exactly. And to test this, researchers created a minimal multi-agent model. In it, agents transformed resources, but they only received feedback when their output was used by another agent. And what emerged from that? Did they need a central controller to direct traffic? No, that's the core finding. Functional interaction networks formed spontaneously. The system developed stable transformation chains and even a core-periphery structure, all without any global objective. Meaning the simple mechanism of functional utilization is enough to produce organized structures. It creates a kind of pre-adaptive search phase from which functional solutions can later emerge. Right. Now, taking that lens from general principles to a specific global system, a study looked at the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. That's the major ocean current system. Researchers explored its stability under different CO2 concentrations. And they identified a 'boundary crisis' at CO2 levels projected for the near future. This means the current stable state of the AMOC disappears, colliding with what they call a chaotic saddle on the basin boundary. This leads to an event called a 'crisis overshoot,' causing long, chaotic transients. Does this explain some of the uncertainty we see in climate models? It seems to. It provides an explanation, grounded in dynamical systems theory, for the large variance and apparent 'stochastic bifurcations'—or random splits—that appear in models under certain scenarios. So we've gone from abstract organization to a global climate system. The analysis also scales down to localized social-ecological systems. One study applied this to transhumance—a form of seasonal livestock movement—in the Nepal Himalayas. These systems are threatened by globalization and climate change, but there's been a lack of information on them. And the findings there challenged the idea that their grazing practices harm biodiversity, showing they also provide household income and cultural value. In a different context, another team studied a village tank cascade system in Sri Lanka, using participatory mapping with local people to chart out how the system works. They identified 49 system elements and over 400 connections, then used network graphs to pinpoint the most influential elements affecting sustainability. Building on that, a new framework was proposed to better integrate the built environment. A review of urban studies found that most treat buildings and roads as a static background, not a dynamic system. So the new Social-Ecological-Spatial Systems, or SESS, framework explicitly adds a spatial domain, considering the morphology, materiality, and history of the built environment. There’s also a new methodology for making these abstract ideas more tangible. It's called the 'resilience thinking walkshop.' A walkshop? It combines walking-based fieldwork with a theoretical framework of adaptive cycles. Applied in Barcelona's Collserola forest, it allows participants to physically observe these cycles in the landscape. So it’s a tool for grounding abstract resilience theory in direct, physical experience. These frameworks also extend to organizations. Yes, researchers developed the 'Platform Thinking Journey.' It's a managerial tool designed to help established firms adopt platform-based business models, which can be a difficult transition. It translates platform principles into action through four phases: Framing, Design, Ignition, and Growth. It includes design principles like reframing from products to interactions. A few other studies are on the radar. A new chapter explores the concept of nature as a computational structure from an info-computational perspective. And in neuroscience, a study uncovered the causal architectures in the primate social brain, clarifying the dynamics of social attention. There's also more work on generative AI. One study of university students found four distinct user profiles. Learning motivation predicted gains in critical thinking, but offloading work to the AI predicted a relinquishment of cognitive autonomy. Related to that, another study identified a 'high depth–high dependence' subgroup of AI users. And a separate analysis found that while large language models have high accuracy on theoretical accounting questions, their performance is lower on practical tasks. Finally, in education, research identified a gap in studies on applied disciplines like engineering. These fields have seen slow progress in adopting student-centered teaching methods compared to 'pure' disciplines. That concludes this issue. We will return with more research summaries on the application of systems thinking. Until next time, on ComplexityPod.