Socioecological System analysis Social Sciences Essay

- plz finish the abstract
- Abstract (5 marks). Summarize your conceptual and theoretical framework that led to you isolating a tractable socioecological systems problem. You next describe (a) the basic problem and (b) why it needs to be researched. The rest of this is about how you can research it. Focus first – and extensively - on how you can describe this as a system (the breakdown below helps guide your approach here). Next, you then describe the methodological framework and likely methods (techniques) suited to analyzing this problem and its system. Finally, reflect upon your expected outcomes and perhaps on any research gaps you expect will remain.

Abstract

In this research paper, it would focus on the link between human and raccoons in City of Toronto, Canada, to further illustrate the relationship between human activities and socioecological system. However, consider the huge population of wildlife lives in the city, it still difficult to solve the conflicts between human and wildlife.

Table of Context

1.0    Background

2.0    Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

3.0    The Socioecological System

3.1    System Components

3.2    System Structure

3.3    System Boundary

3.4    System Scale

3.5    System Perspectives

3.6    System Analysis

Reference

Appendix

1.0 Background

 Human activities influenced the wildlife environment in multiple aspects. Global warming, for example, is the most well-known ones, which change environmental conditions such as temperature and water quality, it impacts wildlife’s habits and population; as a result, biodiversity decreased, increasing number of wildlife species become endangered animals. Habitats lost is another significant influence on wildlife associated with human activities. After the industrial revolution in the 18th century, cities’ size started to grow with dramatic speed. The two photos on the right side show the changes in the City of Toronto from the 1800s to the 21st century. As illustrates in the photos, while the CBD (Central Business District) and high-rise buildings were rising, a large amount of forest, which originally be wildlife’s territories, has been taken by humans. As a result, wildlife force to move and live in the city with humans after they lost their habitats. All wildlife in urban areas will somehow interact with humans, however, there are issues in the equation of wildlife-human while they live together in the cities.

Raccoon (Procyon lotor), is a mammal life in most of the North America lands; they also can be found in northern South America and some parts of Asia and Europe (Choate, 2001). Raccoons are omnivorous and opportunistic; they originally live in the forest, they use fruits and nuts include grapes, apples, berries and corn as their main diet (Choate, 2001). They also consume invertebrates such as Crayfish, frogs and fish (Choate, 2001). However, after they move into the cities, trash and carrion from road-killed animals have been added to their “recipe” to adapt to the new lifestyle (Nowak & Walker, 1999). Their habitats changed from dans in trees to deserted buildings, barns, garages, rain severs and houses (Nowak & Walker, 1999). Another research object, the City of Toronto has a nickname due to its large population of raccoons – “Raccoon Capital of Canada”; they are not only surviving but thriving in the city (Cheung, Whalen & Valido, 2019). Although there is no exact number of raccoon population in Toronto, the scientists have confirmed that there are approximately 100 raccoons per square kilometres in the city (Cheung, Whalen & Valido, 2019). Toronto citizens’ opinions about raccoons are falling into two distinct groups. Some people like them because of their adorable appearance and treat them as a symbol of the city; whereas, other people hate them due to the conflicts they have. As both humans and raccoon’s population will continue growing in the future, the City of Toronto needs to find a way to solve the conflicts and achieve the goal of creating a sustainable city.  

2.0 Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

City areas contain complex habitats include buildings, streets, green spaces; each habitat has its density and lots of them also involve infrastructures and natural habitat remnants such as rivers and railway tracks (Soulsbury & White, 2016). Due to human activities, the ecosystem is facing pressures based on structure change such as temperature rise, and the issues caused by new technologies include light and noise pollution (Soulsbury & White, 2016). These effects combined create huge challenges to the wildlife that live in the place (Soulsbury & White, 2016).

The interaction between humans and wildlife is never a new topic. The earliest records were in ancient Egyptian times that birds and mammals enter urban city and searched for foods (Soulsbury & White, 2016). After 1960s, urban wildlife research has been treated as a discipline and developed dramatically in the next several decades (Soulsbury & White, 2016). However, it is still representing a tiny perspective on wildlife in general. As the urbanisation growth in global, cities need to look at the ecology of urban wildlife, especially the relationship between wildlife and humans (Soulsbury & White, 2016).

Both conflicts and benefits occur during the human – wildlife interactions. Direct attacks are the most direct conflicts between humans and wildlife; it includes wildlife attack humans and pets, and mortality for wildlife by human activities (Soulsbury & White, 2016). The second conflict associated with nuisance, property damage and economic costs, which often cause dissatisfactions to households. Nevertheless, the damages caused by wildlife are minor due to the small size of species live in the city (Soulsbury & White, 2016). The last problem which is the most significant one: diseases. According to the research, near 60% of the pathogenic illness among humans caused by animals; it can be a global issue which threating public health, environment and economy growth (Soulsbury & White, 2016). Ebolavirus for example, was carried by bats and spread by other wildlife.

           Additionally, the interaction between humans and wildlife also provide benefits. In philosophical point of view, the values of urban wildlife often hard to quantify but it still has considerable impact on human (Conover, 2001). For example, natural and wildlife can bring positive effects to people who suffered by mental health problems (Conover, 2001). Moreover, the opportunities that wildlife bring to scientific, ecological and historical study cannot be ignore, some of the countries also treated a specific wildlife species as a symbol such as Pandas to China and Kangaroos to Australia (Conover, 2001).

           Therefore, the interaction between humans and wildlife is a complex web; it contains problems but also opportunities. It can be a tool for people to establish the sustainability goals. Also, the wildlife population in the cities such as raccoons and skunks are already huge, and it is nearly impossible to remove them from the city. Under this premise, find methods to let people and wildlife lives better together is significant and build systems to further analysis the relationship between human and wildlife would be an method to solve conflicts.

3.0 The Socioecological System

3.1 System Components

The components in this system can be identified into four categories: households, raccoons, scientists/ researchers and institutions.

           As two significant components in the City of Toronto, households and raccoons are highly linked together. A large number of raccoons live in the cities nowadays and treat garbage, which meanly humans’ abandoned food, as their main diet. When raccoons have more nutarians than the minimum survival requirement, they would have more offspring and the population would grow dramatically. Since there are no natural enemies for raccoons in Toronto, the increase of the raccoon population may also influence other wildlife that lives in the city. Moreover, lots of people have a bias about raccoons’ abortable appearance, think they are as kind as their pets; as a result, some citizens start to feed raccoons. The results of this action would be reduced raccoon’s natural fear to people, make them invade houses more often and cause damages to households’ property. Besides, the diseases that raccoons may carry such as rabies and canine distemper, are also threats to public health.

 Based on the scenario above, scientists/ researchers and institutions are trying to find ways to solve the conflicts between humans and raccoons. Scientists monitoring both households and wildlife’s health conditions, provide vaccines for citizens to avoid disease carried by raccoons. Oral rabies vaccination (ORV) for example, has been populated in North America in the past twenty years to protect people from raccoons carried diseases. They also study raccoon’s behaviours, get more information about this species and incorporate experiments to find solutions for wildlife-human conflicts. Dr. Suzanne MacDonald for example, is a professor at York University, research about animals’ behaviours and has lots of research projects based on raccoons. Toronto government posted detailed information about raccoons on the city websites, including their habits and how to rightfully treat these wildlife animals. The city government provides policies such as Parks Bylaw, Littering and Dumping Bylaw and Property Standards Bylaw to avoid people continuing to disrupt the ecosystem by feed wildlife animals. The government also has strategies to solve the raccoon problem, such as introduce more stable garbage bins. The organizations such as Gates’ Wildlife Control can help people remove wildlife from their house; they keep both households and wildlife harmless. Finally, raccoons bring economic benefits to the city. Although the demand for raccoon pelts is no longer as high as the 1920s, it still can be sold as imitation mink, otter and seal fur (Nowak & Walker, 1999).

3.2 System Structure

After raccoons lost their natural habitats due to human activities, they live in cities with humans; garbage becomes their main food resource. Since people’s living standards are getting improved in recent years, food is no longer a scarce resource in most cities. Therefore, unfinished foods appear increasingly in the garbage bins, which provides plenty of food for raccoons. Since people have the preference of adorable appearances, some citizens start to feed raccoons and even bring them home and treat them as their pets. The negative results would be reduced raccoon’s nature fear to humans, they may make more dans in people’s house (roof) and damage courtyards, which increase the property lost. Moreover, getting too close to wildlife animals may get the disease that they carried. Thus, these actions are all letting raccoons have extra energy and produce more offspring; it further results in raccoon’s population growth. It is also a threat to other wildlife lives in cities because the lands and recourses are always limited. On the other hand, the raccoons’ health condition has been affected by humans’ waste food. A new study from Laurantian University shows that humans’ food contains high sugar and will lead to elevated body mass, blood glucose and serum leptin (Schulte-Hostedde, Mazal, Jardine & Gagnon, 2018).

The polities associated with wildlife that the City of Toronto has prohibited citizens to feed wildlife animals. It is an efficient way to protect people from diseases and gives wildlife a relevant natural environment for living. Wildlife removal organizations make similar contributions to the city; they remove wildlife from residents’ houses in a professional way and protect both humans and wildlife from unnecessary harm. Scientists study both ecological and phycological habits of wildlife, get a deeper knowledge about the species lives among humans. To get food, raccoons often mess the street and household garbage bins. Though the past decades, the City of Toronto took lots of strategies, include the famous “raccoon-proof green bin”, to avoid raccoons get in. However, humans never stopped them from getting in garbage bins; it seems the raccoons always the ones who win the “war”. Dr. Suzanne and her team had a comparable experiment that uses the raccoons' offspring from city and rural areas, text their reaction when facing garbage bins. The result shows that the baby raccoons from city areas can easily open those garbage bins; it can somehow prove that all the strategies that humans took were changing their genetics and creating smarter raccoons.

3.3 System Boundary

The spatial boundary of this research paper is the City of Toronto. The interactions between humans and raccoons are extremally complex due to the huge population density the city has for both humans and raccoons. In some articles and news reports, the city has been titled as “Raccoon Capital of the Nation” (Cheung, Whalen & Valido, 2019). Besides, Toronto is the city that has more strategies to deal with raccoon problems than any other city in Canada; the city is experienced. The actions include renew garbage bins, provide municipal licensing and standards include bylaws, transportation services and consider wildlife as a significant component in City Planning documents (City of Toronto, 2015). The city also has events such as Toronto Raccoon Walking Tour, to introduce raccoon’s habitats and behaviours to citizens (CNU Ontario, 2018). Thus, set the system boundary in Toronto can have a broad and comprehensive view of raccoons and humans’ interactions.

The temporal boundary would be the human’s activities in the twenty years. Since human activities are the major reason influence raccoons’ habits, compare and contrast the human-wildlife relationship through history is significant. Moreover, the development in the City of Toronto in the past two decades was amazing; major population and technology growth happened within these years (Torontoist, 2009). The chart shows the population growth in the City of Toronto since 2006, which almost occupied half of the GTA’s population growth in all data collection years (Torontoist, 2009). To sum up, since most important human activities happened in this time period, the socioecological system would be complex, and conflicts are clearly shown.

3.4 System Scale

The scale used in this paper is the city level. First of all, cities do not contain a huge number of complex components, which is suitable for paper research and easy to narrow the topic down to case studies. Besides, cities also have all the necessary elements: political, ecological, social and so on. In other words, the socio-ecological systems within cities are complete. However, scale the system up and down sometimes useful for researchers to get a broader view of the system. In the humans-raccoons’ case, the system scale above would be the national level and scale below would be community level.

The scale diagram illustrates the important components and their wright at each scale level, which represented by different icon image sizes. The basic components and structures in all three system levels are similar. As demonstrated in the previous sections, raccoons and households are the most significant components in the city level system. Although the government has policies to control humans’ behaviour, the work that researchers and institutions have done is recommendation based. Nonetheless, at the national level, more types of the institution involved, such as the Federal government; institutions have more power and become the most important components in the system. When making decisions on a national level, governments always put national benefits as the first consideration, which usually connects with economic growth. Also, the environmental conditions throughout the country are not the same; some places have less raccoons. Therefore, in the national level system, raccoons become a less important component. Vice versa, in the community level system, raccoons have absolute dominant positions; most of the communities have more raccoons than humans. Furthermore, policies and strategies often hard to regulate in small areas since most of the places in communities are privet lands.

3.5 System Perspectives 

Biologists pay close attention to raccoons’ life conditions. From their point of view, human activities in the past decades have changed the natural environment and reduce wildlife habitats. They claim that people have the responsibility to provide a better environment for city wildlife to live in. In the new study about raccoons’ health condition influenced by humans’ waste food (section 3.2), biologists said this might be a threat to raccoons and their population would be a decline in the future.

Nevertheless, phycologists have different opinions. Dr. MacDonald from York university said, “It's unlikely city raccoons will develop chronic health conditions related to their high blood sugar; most will die in traffic first” (Weikle, 2018). Phycologists focus on raccoons’ behaviours, research on raccoons’ movements and actions in the cities. They believe humans and wildlife can live together peacefully.

From a political perspective, balance is the most important thing. Since it is impossible for a human to remove wildlife from the cities, they are trying to use legislation and strategies to balance the relationship between residents and raccoons.

3.6 Methodology

Operationalizing descriptions of socioecological systems poses a variety of difficulties. While there are many reasons that could contribute to this, one of the major factors is the sheer complexity of environmental, personal, and societal/cultural interactions that are happening simultaneously with one another. Nonetheless, in order to operationalize the systems description (Figure 1.) about conflicts between humans and wildlife among the city, an “unstructured approach” would be utilized in order to conduct a bottom-up analysis on the situation. Particularly, this would include two approaches such as (1) Checkland’s Soft Systems Approach (SSM) and (2) computer-based modeling systems. By using these two different models, problems of human-wildlife interactions in the urban areas could be resolved.

            In the discussion provided by Bosch, et al (2007), the authors described the differences between soft systems and hard systems. Accordingly, while hard systems focus on “biophysical systems that can be modelled”, soft systems are those that “focus on the interactions between biophysical components”. In line with the problem, the understanding of the movement patterns and other behavioral aspect of racoons could easily be understood by focusing on diferrent specific component interactions (i.e., ‘recoon -feeding’ and house infestation) and building from scratch rather than using generalized structured models (i.e., biophysical systems). In other words, a soft systems approach would be utilize in order to understand and provide a grassroot solution to the problem.

Checkland’s Soft System Model (SSM)

            Appropriately the soft system that would be used is SSM, which undertakes the process of problem identification, understanding, and solution-building with the help of different stakeholders. As compared to other approaches, SSM’s advantage is its ‘representativeness’ of the actual situations that are happening around the world. In doing so, some authors have integrated participatory research, development, and extension (PRDE), which aims to build a solution with the help of everyone involved. Accordingly, the steps in operationalizing this PRDE method is discussed in greater detail below.

As stated, the main issue sought to be resolved in this article is ‘how can people and wildlife live together in peace harmony in the urban setting’. From this core question, several other hypotheses have arisen, which would be addressed through the SSM Model.

Human Actions

           One of the theories provided is that the human actions of feeding raccoons cause them to become less ‘afraid’ of humans, thereby increasing the likelihood of attacks to both the persons and properties of individuals. To understand if there is a causal connection between these two, a two-fold participatory research would be conducted integrating both the efforts of the community and the authorities.

First, a “raccoon infestation report” would be provided to the authorities containing the reports of attacks made by raccoons in a certain area. This would be a general overview of the situation, which can then be used in computer simulations to produce a visual output (i.e., map).

Second, citizens would be encouraged to participate in an ecological behavioral research. Particularly, a certain community would be divided into three separate blocks; (1) A, (2) B, and (2) C, each with a significant similarity in socio-political (i.e., population) and geographic (i.e., presence of parks) characteristics with one another. Such similarity would allow the researchers to rule out any factors that could affect the raccoons’ behaviors. On the one hand, Block A would serve as the control group that continues their ‘current practices’ in dealing with raccoons such as trapping raccoons or feeding them. In contrast, Block B would completely stop feeding practices and continue trapping them, whereas block C would increase feeding practices in public places and decrease trapping. The prompts of each block could be seen in Table 1 as provided below.

Table 1

Following this, baseline data would be gathered from each block through the pre-provided “raccoon infestation report” and repeatedly taken for a period of three-months in order to ascertain any changes in the behaviors of the animals. Thereafter, appropriate graphs, maps, and charts could be the basis for the collective decision-making of all the stakeholders.

Societal Policies        

            Societal Policies could also affect raccoon behaviors. As hypothesized in the system analysis, ordinances and other laws such as Parks Bylaws, Littering and Duping Bylaws, and Property Standards Bylaws could affect the behaviors of animals towards humans. Similarly, the reduction of wastes or proper disposal thereof in parks and near the houses could be an effective way of reducing raccoon infestations. Thus, the SSM model could be used one again to understand the effectivity of these rules in addressing the main problem.

            To do this, the author would like to propose employing two parks that are located in the same location and imposed with the same rules, yet geographically separated from one another. This factor is important in order to make sure that the practices in the parks as well as the raccoon population are the same, while the results would not be mixed with one another. Accordingly, a raccoon infestation report would be provided again with the authorities to serve as a complementary tool for data analysis. On the one hand, the community near Park A would be asked to properly dispose and tightly seal their garbage bins or to have them kept in a sealed area near the park pursuant to the rules of community. On the other hand, the community near Park B would be asked to stay with their current practices, which “slightly deviates” from the community rules and ordinances. Accordingly, the prompts are also provided as follows:

Table 2

Afterwards, the data could again be used for computer modeling purposes that would help the community in creating joint decisions based from the data collected.

All in all, the use of participatory research and development through Checkland’s SSM Model could help operationalize the system provided above. By focusing on collective interventions and research an in-depth analysis and solution could be generated and repeated to other communities around the same geographic area.

Reference

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