Water resources across the globe are facing unprecedented stress from intensifying competition from agricultural, industrial, and domestic users, coupled with climate change, and environmental degradation from land use change and practices. Managing water resources entails balancing complex and often conflicting demands among different uses and users, including the needs of ecosystems and society. Integrated socio-environmental modelling is an important tool that allows such complex problems to be understood, explored and analysed, in particular to support decision making. However, there are a number of technical, social, cultural and political challenges that impede the development and implementation of such tools, especially those related to the integration of biophysical and socioeconomic models.
This session explores new and recent developments that contribute to the integration of biophysical and socioeconomic models, data and knowledge frames. While this challenge is introduced in the context of water resources management, lessons from the assessment and management of other natural resources are also welcomed. We invite submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
Papers for this session could be invited to be extended for publication in the open access journal SESMO.
Key topics: Integrated modelling, Socio-environmental systems, Integration, Water management