Multiple interactions between population increase-as driving force- and pressure factors can cause damage to human-nature interactions. In this paper, we aim to identify, understand, and assess those interactions that exert effects on environment quality. The assessments of multiple interactions will allow selecting management actions to reduce negative effects, such as the loss of vegetation cover, on the environment. However, multiple interactions hinder the understanding of such complex systems. The relevance of this study is related to the support of the systems thinking approach to achieve two objectives: (1) to build a conceptual framework that facilitates the construction of a network aimed at representing the multiple interactions; (2) to build a closed system for the sake of developing a sustainable environmental management system. Thus, the performance of the implemented management actions is assessed through the feedback loop of the closed system. The proposed conceptual framework and the closed system were applied to the state of Morelos, Mexico. We highlight the following results: the systems thinking approach facilitated the construction of a conceptual framework to build understandable causal network; a set of environmental pathways were derived from the causal network and then combined to define and assess a global environmental state. Environmental pathways are composed of relationships between population increase and pressure variables that exert effects on the environment quality; the feedback loop facilitated the performance analysis of implemented management actions related to natural protected areas. The current results suggest further research to apply this study to diverse systems where multiple interactions between drivers and pressure factors damage human-nature interactions, thus exerting effects on the environmental state.

This paper proposes a hybrid method integrating case-based reasoning (CBR) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods to reinforce the sustainable performance of an environmental management system. The CBR–AHP method aims to support the decision-making process to select environmental management actions (EMAs) aimed at reducing risky trends of the environmental state of a region. The CBR methods takes advantage of a set of situation–solution pairs called cases, which are stored in a memory and then retrieved as candidates to solve new problems. Situations in this work are represented by a set of risky trends of key environmental pathways (KEPs) related to CO₂ emissions, air quality, loss of vegetation cover, water availability, and solid waste, the combination of which damage the environmental state quality of a region. Meanwhile, solutions are represented by a set of EMAs. Similar situations to a given current situation are retrieved from the memory of cases, and then their solutions are combined through an adaptation mechanism, until the solution of the current problem is obtained. The AHP method is used to assign weights to environmental variables and to alternative solutions represented by EMAs. We used risky trends derived from real data related to the environmental states of a Mexican region to test the proposed CBR–AHP hybrid method. The results obtained provided insights into the potential of the CBR–AHP hybrid method to support the decision-making process to select EMAs aimed at reducing risky trends of current environmental states.

We studied the cultural eutrophication process assessments of coastal lagoons by considering sociopolitical, socioeconomic, demographic, technological, and cultural factors, which represent indirect drivers exerting effects on the eutrophication process, causing changes on the trophic status. Multifactorial interactions in eutrophication processes make understanding their complex dynamics difficult, leading to unreliable assessments and, consequently, to unsustainable management actions. This, in turn, hinders the feasibility of coastal lagoon sustainability. We propose a method based on the evaluation of pathways derived from a multifactorial network, which represents the eutrophication process, with the aim of determining the feasibility of the sustainability of the Tres Palos coastal lagoon. Our findings revealed that most of the evaluations of relationships belonging to pathways were unfeasible due to reasons such as: there was no evidence of the existence of public policies, technological skills, and cultural factors; there was a lack of data related to human settlements around the lagoon and river, industrial waste, agricultural practices, and tourism. The preceding shortcomings hinder the feasibility of coastal lagoon sustainability under study. We suggest that assessments of cultural eutrophication processes that overlook sociopolitical, socioeconomic, technological, and cultural factors are limited and inadequate for supporting the feasibility of sustainable coastal lagoons.

Models based on multifactorial interactions are needed to deal with the dynamics taking place in the eutrophication processes of coastal lagoons. However, as the number of indirect drivers stemming from anthropogenic factors increases, temporal disorders between anthropogenic activities may increase, thus hindering the understanding of their dynamics. We have built multifactorial pathways to deal with the dynamics associated with the cultural eutrophication process of a coastal lagoon. The pathways guided the identification of potential temporal disorder patterns between anthropogenic activities, which may exert influence on the disturbances associated with eutrophication process. The identification of temporal disorder patterns derived from anthropogenic activities belonging to different pathways resulted in a valuable form of support for analyzing and evaluating relationships between public policies, technological skills and environmental culture programs. All of which exert influence on the eutrophication process, which in turn cause changes on the trophic state and on the landscape of the coastal lagoon. Pathways composed of multifactorial interactions that take into account spatial and temporal aspects, contribute to improving the understanding of the inherent dynamics of the eutrophication process of coastal lagoons. Temporal disorders between anthropogenic activities may be seen to emerge, thus exerting changes on the trophic state and spatial damage on the landscapes of coastal lagoons.

Atmospheric particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers (PM_2.5) were collected at two sites located in the urban area of the city of Cuernavaca (Morelos) during a season when a large number of forest fires occurred. Three dicarboxylic acids (malonic, glutaric and succinic) and levoglucosan were analyzed by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (ESI-Q-TOF) and soluble potassium (K⁺) was analyzed by ion chromatography. The concentration of PM_2.5 increased on the days when the highest number of forest fires occurred. A strong correlation was observed between levoglucosan and K⁺, confirming the hypothesis that both are tracers of biomass burning (r = 0.57, p < 0.05). Levoglucosan (average 367.6 ng m⁻³, Site 2) was the most abundant compound, followed by succinic acid (average 101.7 ng m⁻³, Site 2), glutaric acid (average 63.2 ng m⁻³, Site 2), and malonic acid (average 46.9 ng m⁻³, Site 2), respectively. The ratio of C₃/C₄ concentrations ranged from 0.5 to 1.2, with an average of 0.8, which suggests great photochemical activity in the Cuernavaca atmosphere. The ratio of K⁺/levoglucosan concentrations (0.44) indicates that open fires are the main source of these tracers. The positive correlations between PM_2.5 and levoglucosan and succinic and malonic acids suggest that such compounds are contributing to secondary organic aerosol particle formation.