Panarchy provides a heuristic to characterize the cross-scale dynamics of social-ecological systems and a framework for how governance institutions should behave to be compatible with the ecosystems they manage. Managing for resilience will likely require reform of law to account for the dynamics of social-ecological systems and achieve a substantive mandate that accommodates the need for adaptation. In this paper, we suggest expansive legal reform by identifying the principles of reflexive law as a possible mechanism for achieving a shift to resilience-based governance and leveraging cross-scale dynamics to provide resilience-based responses to increasingly challenging environmental conditions

It is time to move past the concept of sustainability. The realities of the Anthropocene warrant this conclusion. They include unprecedented and irreversible rates of human-induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change. These factors combine to create an increasing likelihood of rapid, nonlinear, social and ecological regime changes. The recent failure of the Rio + 20 provides an opportunity to collectively reexamine—and ultimately move past—the concept of sustainability as an environmental goal. We must face the impossibility of defining—let alone pursuing—a goal of “sustainability” in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty and lack of stationarity. After briefly examining sustainability's failure, we propose resilience thinking as one possible new orientation and point to the challenges associated with translating resilience theory into policy application.

Water features (e.g., water quantity and water quality) are one of the most important environmental factors essential to improving climate-change resilience. Remote sensing (RS) technologies empowered by artificial intelligence (AI) have become one of the most demanded strategies to automating water information extraction and thus intelligent monitoring. In this article, we provide a systematic review of the literature that incorporates artificial intelligence and computer vision methods in the water resources sector with a focus on intelligent water body extraction and water quality detection and monitoring through remote sensing. Based on this review, the main challenges of leveraging AI and RS for intelligent water information extraction are discussed, and research priorities are identified. An interactive web application designed to allow readers to intuitively and dynamically review the relevant literature was also developed.

Cosens, B. A., R. K. Craig, S. Hirsch, C. A. (T.) Arnold, M. H. Benson, D. A. DeCaro, A. S. Garmestani, H. Gosnell, J. Ruhl, and E. Schlager. 2017. The role of law in adaptive governance. Ecology and Society 22(1):30. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08731-220130

Gunderson, L., B. A. Cosens, B. C. Chaffin, C. A. (T.) Arnold, A. K. Fremier, A. S. Garmestani, R. K. Craig, H. Gosnell, H. E. Birge, C. R. Allen, M. H. Benson, R. R. Morrison, M. C. Stone, J. A. Hamm, K. Nemec, E. Schlager, and D. Llewellyn. 2017. Regime shifts and panarchies in regional scale social-ecological water systems. Ecology and Society 22(1):31. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08879-220131