Representation of environmental dynamics in models of socio-environmental systems

Environmental changes can be related to naturally occurring phenomena or human activities such as land use. Considering that more than three quarters of the global land surface have been and are currently altered by humans, societies and their biophysical environments as coupled socio-environmental systems (SES) are more prominent than natural ecosystems. In many instances, people are directly or indirectly affected by environmental changes, and changes in environmental properties and dynamics (soil quality, water levels, forest growth, rainfall …) vice versa often change human decisions and behaviour. Due to these bidirectional influences, we emphasise the need for ( more) accurate representations of environmental changes and dynamics in SES-studies, to avoid spurious or biased estimates of the production of food, feed or other goods and services. In this paper we present examples of environmental changes and how they may trigger reactions in the social system, with a special focus on demonstrating how the feedbacks from environmental dynamics are or could be represented in SES-models.