Murray Scown

Climate change calls for adaptive strategies to manage land system across governance levels, as differing multi-level policies distinctly shape land system and long-term ecosystem resilience. This study proposes an iterative approach for optimizing land-use pathways that balance competing policy objectives across national, provincial, and local levels without compromising ecosystem integrity in a changing climate. This approach was applied to the Huangshui River Basin on China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a region facing significant challenges from climate change and human activities. We integrated the land-use change model CLUMondo with the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to compare our sustainable development pathway against scenarios based on plans prioritizing national, provincial, and local governance objectives. The analysis revealed considerable mismatches in management goals across governance levels within the Huangshui River Basin, emphasizing the necessity of multi-scale coordination to align planning objectives for achieving desired goals. This study presents an optimization framework to quantitatively evaluate trade-offs and balance between sustainability objectives and ecosystem integrity in response to system feedbacks, offering critical insights into reconciling potentially conflicting sustainability goals across multiple scales within socio-ecological systems.