Edited by Lance H. Gunderson & C.S. Holling

Taken from Back Cover:
"Creating institutions to meet the challenge of sustainability is arguably the most important task confronting society. Panarchy, a term devised to describe evolving hierarchical systems, offers an important new framework for integrating insights from ecology and the social sciences in this effort. Based on the concept of cycles of creative destruction and renewal, Panarchy is a fundamental new development in a widely acclaimed line of inquiry. It will be an invaluable resource for researchers, professionals and students involved with ecology, economics, environmental policy, and related fields."

Contributors: Nick Abel, Fikret Berkes, William A. Brock, Stephen R. Carpenter, Carl Folke, Gilberto C. Gallopin, Lance H. Gunderson, C.S. Holling, Milena Holmgren, Marco A. Janssen, Donald Ludwig, Karl-Goran Maler, Charles Perrings, Garry D. Peterson, Lowell Pritchard, Jr., Steven E. Sanderson, Maren Scheffer, Brian Walker, Frances Westley, Ralf Yorque

Contents:

• In Quest of a Theory of Adaptive Change
• Resilience and Adaptive Cycles
• Sustainability and Panarchies
• Why Systems of People and Nature Are Not Just Social and Ecological Systems
• Back to the Future: Ecosystem Dynamics and Local Knowledge
• The Dynamics of Political Discourse in Seeking Sustainability
• Collapse, Learning, and Renewal
• Dynamic Interaction of Societies and Ecosystems - Linking Theories from Ecology, Economy, and Sociology
• A Future of Surprises
• Resilience and Sustainability: The Economic Analysis of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems
• Resilient Rangelands - Adaptation in Complex Systems
• Surprises and Sustainability: Cycles of Renewal in the Everglades
• The Devil in the Dynamics: Adaptive Management on the Front Lines
• Planning for Resilience: Scenarios, Surprises, and Branch Points
• Discoveries for Sustainable Futures
• Toward an Integrative Synthesis
• Appendix A: A Model for Ecosystems with Alternative Stable States
• Appendix B: Optimizing Social Utility from Lake Use
• Appendix C: Tax as a Way to Direct Society
• Appendix D: Collective Action Problems and Their Effect on Political Power