摘要：Current ecological, economic, and social conditions present unique challenges to naturalresource managers seeking to maintain the resilience of disturbance-dependent ecosystems, such as oak(Quercus spp.) forests. Oak-dominated ecosystems throughout the U.S. have historically been perpetuatedthrough periodic disturbance, such as fire, but more recently show decline given shifting disturbance regimesassociated with human land management decisions. We characterized the state of the social-ecological oakforest ecosystem in the midwestern U.S. through the perspectives of 32 natural resource professionals.Data from interviews with these change agents provided an integrative understanding of key systemcomponents, cross-scale interactions, dependencies, and feedbacks. Foremost, private landownermanagement decisions figured prominently in influencing oak regeneration success and were directly andindirectly shaped by a suite of interdependent ecological, e.g., deer herbivory, invasive shrub occurrence;economic, e.g., the cost of oak regeneration practices, the stumpage value of maple as compared to oak;and social forces, e.g., forestland parcelization, and personal relationships. Interviewees envisioned, andoften preferred, a decline in oak dominance throughout the region, pointing to issues related to generallandowner unwillingness to restore oak, the current trajectory of forest change, the threat of forest loss dueto parcelization and housing development, and a combination of ecological and social factors that decreasethe economic feasibility of restoration efforts. However, a decline in oak dominance may result in ecologicalcommunities that have no compositional equivalent on record and may not offer a desirable endpoint.Increasing social support offers the potential to enhance system capacity to manage for oak
关键词：conservation; oak forests; privately-owned lands; qualitative interviews; resilience; systems;analysis
