Download Adaptive Cycle - UNL Office of Research

Understanding Resilience in Working
Agricultural Landscapes
Craig R. Allen
Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Climate Change
Workshop 2007
Overview
• 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
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
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Workshop 2007
Freshwater Lakes
Clear
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Freshwater Lakes
Clear
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Algae
Rangelands in Australia
Grass
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Rangelands in Australia
Grass
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Shrubs
Sandhills in Nebraska
Grass
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Sandhills in Nebraska
Grass
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Dunes or Brush
Observed Ecosystem Shifts
FROM:
Clear water lake
Benthic Vegetation
Grassland
Forest Pest outbreak
Hard Coral
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Workshop 2007
TO:
Turbid water lake
Algae
Shrubland
No outbreak
Algae
Resilience
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
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Workshop 2007
Threshold Response
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Threshold Response
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Workshop 2007
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
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Multidisciplinary network focused on
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Workshop 2007
Understanding of complex environmental systems
Combining social, economic, and ecological factors
Extensive involvement in Adaptive Management
Regional case studies linked with theory development
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
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Workshop 2007
Resilience Video
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Workshop 2007
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
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
Climate Change
Workshop 2007
The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
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
Climate Change
Workshop 2007
Resilience Questions
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How does resilience manifest itself in different systems?
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What are the properties of systems that make them more or less resilient?
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How do we measure resilience?
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How do we recover resilience and adaptability in systems where they are
being eroded, and enhance them in systems undergoing change?
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Workshop 2007
Resilience and Climate Change - What’s the Connection?
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How does resilience manifest itself in different systems?
Some systems will be more or less affected by climate change.
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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?
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Workshop 2007
What Insights Might Resilience Thinking Bring to the
Understanding and Anticipation of Climate Change?
Hysterisis: When the Path Out is not the same as the Path In
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Workshop 2007
Thresholds
Linear changes (inputs) can have non-linear responses
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Workshop 2007
Surprise
Unanticipated reactions to efforts to control variation
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Workshop 2007
UNL Resilience Projects
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Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
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NSF Proposed – Resilience of Water Resources
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USDA NRI – Resilience in Working Landscapes
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Sandhills Biocomplexity
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Workshop 2007
Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
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The contribution of high diversity patches in an agricultural landscape
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How does diversity relate to
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Pollination
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Herbivory
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Soil development
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Invasion resistance
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And are some of these ecosystem services exported to adjacent row crop
agriculture?
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If so, how does this contribute to the resilience of the landscape?
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Workshop 2007
Invasion Resistance
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Herbivory
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Workshop 2007
Adaptive Resource Management (and Adaptive Governance)
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A method to experimentally probe systems to determine key uncertainties,
with experiments where it is ok to fail
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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."
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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
•
Climate Change
Workshop 2007
Establishing MS and PhD options in ARM
Adaptive Harvest Management for Greater Prairie-Chicken
Harvest in Southeast Nebraska
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Adaptive Resource Management
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Using harvests and surveys to gain information about harvest mortality
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Workshop 2007
Adaptive Harvest Management Process
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Workshop 2007
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Determine objectives
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Define regulatory options
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Define set of models to represent uncertainties
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Design annual monitoring program
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Define way to measure model credibility
Comparing Model Predictions to Survey Data
Reducing model uncertainty
700
600
500
400
300
Surveyed males
200
Additive model prediction
100
Compensatory model prediction
0
2000
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Workshop 2007
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Resilience and Climate Change Questions
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How will the intensification of agriculture driven by increased
demand for ethanol affect the resilience of agricultural
landscapes to change driven by climate warming?
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How will climate change affect water availability in the Great
Plains, and how will this affect the resilience of this system?
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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/
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What surprises might we anticipate? How might we mitigate
potential negative changes. What scenarios should we
envision?
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Thank you!
Climate Change
Workshop 2007