摘要：The growing awareness about the need to anticipate the future of land systems focuses onhow well we understand the interactions between society and environmental processes within a complexityframework. A major barrier to understanding is insufficient attention given to long (multidecadal) temporalperspectives on complex system behavior that can provide insights through both analog and evolutionaryapproaches. Analogs are useful in generating typologies of generic system behavior, whereas evolutionaryassessments provide insight into site-specific system properties. Four dimensions of these properties: (1)trends and trajectories, (2) frequencies, thresholds and alternate steady states, (3) slow and fast processes,and (4) legacies and contingencies, are discussed. Compilations and analyses of past information and datafrom instruments and observations, palaeoenvironmental archives, and human and environmental historyare now the subject of major international effort. The embedding of empirical information over multidecadaltimescales in attempts to define and model sustainable and adaptive management of land systems is nownot only possible, but also necessary
关键词：adaptation; complex systems; Global Land Project; land systems; multidecadal timescales;resilience; socioecological systems; sustainability science
