climate change workshop 2007 understanding resilience in working agricultural landscapes craig r....
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Climate Change Workshop 2007
Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
Craig R. AllenNebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Climate Change Workshop 2007
• Resilience
• Climate change: non-linear surprises following changes in slow variables
• UNL and the Resilience Alliance
• UNL Resilience Research / Adaptive Management Approaches
• Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
• An adaptive management approach for selecting habitat improvement targets in the shortgrass prairie
• Adaptive harvest management for greater prairie-chicken harvest in Southeast Nebraska
Overview
Climate Change Workshop 2007
“A public Domain, once a velvet carpet of rich Buffalo-grass
and grama, now an illimitable waste of rattlesnake-bush and
tumbleweed, too impoverished to be accepted as a gift by
the states within which It lies. Why? Because the ecology of
the Southwest happened to be set on a hair trigger.”
Aldo Leopold, The Conservation Ethic, 1935
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Observed Ecosystem Shifts
FROM:
Clear water lake
Benthic Vegetation
Grassland
Forest Pest outbreak
Hard Coral
TO:
Turbid water lake
Algae
Shrubland
No outbreak
Algae
Climate Change Workshop 2007
A measure of the amount of “disturbance” needed to “flip” an ecosystem from one stable state to a different stable state
Both undesirable and desirable system states can be highly resilient, i.e., hard to shift to another state
Resilience
Climate Change Workshop 2007
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
• Multidisciplinary network focused on
– Understanding of complex environmental systems– Combining social, economic, and ecological factors– Extensive involvement in Adaptive Management– Regional case studies linked with theory development
Climate Change Workshop 2007
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
• Multidisciplinary network focused on
– Understanding of complex environmental systems– Combining social, economic, and ecological factors– Extensive involvement in Adaptive Management– Regional case studies linked with theory development
– Paradigm shift from top-down (command-and-control) optimization to resilience and self-organization
– Explores complex dynamics in social-ecological systems– Research focus on managing for resilience, adaptability, and transformability in
systems of people and nature
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Arizona State University Center for Environmental Studies
Beijer International Institute for Ecological Economics
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique
Indiana University, Center for the Study of Institutions
Stockholm University, Center for Transdisciplinary Research
James Cook University, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reefs
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
Emory University
McGill School of the Environment
South Africa node
Stockholm Environmental Institute
Dutch Node
University of Wisconsin
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Arizona State University Center for Environmental Studies
Beijer International Institute for Ecological Economics
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique
Indiana University, Center for the Study of Institutions
Stockholm University, Center for Transdisciplinary Research
James Cook University, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reefs
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
Emory University
McGill School of the Environment
South Africa node
Stockholm Environmental Institute
Dutch Node
University of Wisconsin
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Resilience Questions
• How does resilience manifest itself in different systems?
• What are the properties of systems that make them more or less resilient?
• How do we measure resilience?
• How do we recover resilience and adaptability in systems where they are being eroded, and enhance them in systems undergoing change?
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Resilience and Climate Change - What’s the Connection?
• How does resilience manifest itself in different systems?
Some systems will be more or less affected by climate change.
• What are the properties of systems that make them more or less resilient?
How do we recognize which systems are vulnerable and which aren’t vulnerable, and how do we decrease the vulnerability of systems to the threat of climate change?
How do we lessen the chance of unpleasant ecological or economic surprise driven by climate change?
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Hysterisis: When the Path Out is not the same as the Path In
What Insights Might Resilience Thinking Bring to the Understanding and Anticipation of Climate Change?
Climate Change Workshop 2007
UNL Resilience Projects
• Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
• NSF Proposed – Resilience of Water Resources
• USDA NRI – Resilience in Working Landscapes
• Sandhills Biocomplexity
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
• The contribution of high diversity patches in an agricultural landscape
• How does diversity relate to
– Pollination
– Herbivory
– Soil development
– Invasion resistance
• And are some of these ecosystem services exported to adjacent row crop agriculture?
• If so, how does this contribute to the resilience of the landscape?
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Adaptive Resource Management (and Adaptive Governance)
• A method to experimentally probe systems to determine key uncertainties, with experiments where it is ok to fail
• An approach that “…views policy as hypotheses: that is, most policies are really questions masquerading as answers. Because policies are questions, then management actions become treatments, in an experimental sense."
• UNL projects:
– Adaptive harvest management for greater prairie-chicken harvest in Southeast Nebraska
– An adaptive management approach for selecting habitat improvement targets in the shortgrass prairie ecosystem
• Establishing MS and PhD options in ARM
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Adaptive Harvest Management for Greater Prairie-Chicken Harvest in Southeast Nebraska
• Adaptive Resource Management
• Using harvests and surveys to gain information about harvest mortality
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Adaptive Harvest Management Process
• Determine objectives
• Define regulatory options
• Define set of models to represent uncertainties
• Design annual monitoring program
• Define way to measure model credibility
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Comparing Model Predictions to Survey Data
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Surveyed males
Additive model prediction
Compensatory model prediction
Reducing model uncertainty
Climate Change Workshop 2007
Resilience and Climate Change Questions• How will the intensification of agriculture driven by increased demand for
ethanol affect the resilience of agricultural landscapes to change driven by climate warming?
• How will climate change affect water availability in the Great Plains, and how will this affect the resilience of this system?
• How will climate change affect the distribution and diversity of animals and plants, and how will this influence the resilience of Great Plains ecosystems. http://calmit.unl.edu/invasives/
• What surprises might we anticipate? How might we mitigate potential negative changes. What scenarios should we envision?
• Thank you!