AAG Open Forum

Dear Colleagues,

Human and environment systems are adaptive and complex. They are highly interrelated through impact and feedback loops with nonlinear, reciprocal and emergent properties across multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales. Understanding the complexities and dynamics of the human and environmental systems is crucial to sound environmental policy making for sustainable development. Traditional studies mainly focus on either human or environmental systems, which have serious limitations in revealing their complex interrelations. The recent development of science and technology, particularly data acquisition and computational capacity, has made significant contribution to new theory development and methodological innovation, which allows us to explore the complex systems as well as conduct site specific empirical investigations. This special collection will include papers that focuses on most recent advancements in theory and application in understanding complex human-environment systems. Specifically, we seek research work on the following topics:

• The formulation and development of generalizable theories (e.g., complex systems theory, sustainability science) that explain the dynamics of complex human-environment systems in a given place or telecoupling of human-environmental systems across space. Theories regarding the mechanisms and pathways that cross the human and environmental systems or cross different human-environmental systems through telecoupling are of high interest for this special issue.
• Impacts of environmental policies on the dynamics of the human-environmental systems, particularly the mechanisms and pathways that strengthen or weaken the anticipated environmental policy effects or surprise effects in the human-environmental systems.
• Practical applications of human-environment interactions theories based on innovative platforms, such as remote sensing, GIS, agent-based modeling, big data, machine learning/artificial intelligence to understand the dynamics of specific human-environmental systems, including, but not limited to, human-environmental system's structure and functions changes and the implications to its sustainability, influence of disturbance (e.g., human and natural hazards) on system's behavior.

 The collection is currently included on the AMS Special Collections "Call for Papers" website here.

 Sincerely yours,

Guest Editors

Dr. Li An

Professor of Geography, Department of Geography and Director of Complex Human-Environment Systems (CHES) Center, San Diego State University, USA

Email: lan@sdsu.edu

Dr. Conghe Song

Professor of Geography and Research Fellow in the Carolina Population Center, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Email: csong@email.unc.edu

Dr. Dapeng Li

Assistant Professor of Geography, Department of Geography and Geospatial Sciences, South Dakota State University, USA

Email: dapeng.li@sdstate.edu