This talk will be split into two parts. The first one deals with a mathematical model that couples a bistable ecological system with a bistable socio-economic system. The coupled model can have up to four stable equilibria and is analyzed with respect to their resilience and to (un-)desirable regime shifts due to management policies. The ecological system describes the level of lake water pollution (eutrophication). The socio-economic system describes the behavior of humans as choosing between two different strategies of environmentally friendly low pollution and economical high pollution. The model is a slightly modified version of Suzuki and Iwasa (2009).

The second part of the talk concerns dynamic agricultural landscapes, in which farmers can choose between cropland and farmland. This land-use decision is based on economic yield, price expectations, soil quality, and subsidies. At the same time, land use affects ecological dynamics. Here, we consider a single species that is modeled as a metapopulation. We extend a model by Barraquand and Martinet (2011) to include social pressure and show that it can steer and stabilize land use patterns, governed by multistable dynamics.