The importance of national parks to nation‐building: Support for the National Parks Act (2000) in the Scottish Parliament

In 2000 Scotland finally introduced legislation to enable the establishment of its first national parks, 50 years after England and Wales. This paper considers interpretations of this event and reflects on the importance of national parks to nation‐building. Grounded within a framework which holds landscape to be an important signifier of national identity, these issues are explored through a case study of the Cairngorms National Park. This study found that it was the ‘nation‐building’ agenda which was a key factor in securing the unanimous support of the Scottish Parliament for the National Parks Act (2000) but that this agenda hid competing definitions of what shape Scotland's landscapes should be. This suggests that the National Parks Act appealed as a form of institutional, as opposed to cultural, nation‐building.     

Investigation of coupled hydraulic–geomechanical processes at the KTB site: pressure‐dependent characteristics of a long‐term pump test and elastic interpretation using a geomechanical facies model

The German Continental Deep Drilling Program comprising a pilot borehole down to 4000 m and a main borehole down to 9101 m in southeast Germany (KTB) is continuing to provide a unique opportunity for the identification of important factors and processes in deep‐seated fluid and energy transfer. In situ stress conditions significantly impact flow, transport and exchange characteristics of fracture networks that dominate the permeability of crystalline reservoir rocks. In this paper, several scales of information are combined to present a fully three‐dimensional hydraulic finite element model of the principal KTB fault zones, and linked to a geomechanical model describing the alteration of the hydraulic parameters with stress changes caused by fluid extraction. The concept of geomechanical facies is introduced to define and characterize architectural elements in the subsurface system. Evaluation of a long‐term pump test in the KTB pilot hole, June 2002–July 2003, coupled with a geomechanical model gives an insight into some of the elastic and nonelastic processes controlling hydraulic transport in the basement rocks. Trends in the decline of the permeability and the degree of storage in the system could only partially be explained by elastic processes, clearly indicating the importance of nonelastic processes. A number of inelastic processes are suggested as areas for further research.     

Background on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

This article provides an overview of the structure and evolution of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and a short introduction to its use by scholars to analyze a diversity of puzzles. It then addresses the relationship of IAD to a more complex framework for the analysis of social‐ecological systems and concludes with a short discussion of future challenges facing IAD scholars.     

Robustness of Social‐Ecological Systems: Implications for Public Policy

We conceptualize social‐ecological systems (SESs) as complex adaptive systems where public policy affects and is affected by the biophysical system in which it is embedded. The study of robustness of SESs combines insights from various disciplines including economics, political science, ecology, and engineering. In this paper we present an approach that can be used to explore the implications for public policy when viewed as a component of a complex adaptive system. Our approach leverages the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research that focuses on system‐wide outcomes of the policy process beyond just policy change. The main message is that building robustness can create new vulnerabilities. Fail‐free policies cannot be developed, and instead of a focus on the “right” policy, we need to think about policy processes that stimulate experimentation, adaptation, and learning.