Functions and Uses of Wetlands in Changing Savannah Environments

土地和水资源短缺目前正在推动东非草原环境中湿地的使用。牧民、传统自给农民和商业农场日益争夺有限的土地和水资源。湿地与周围旱地稀树草原之间的转移在物质层面和社会层面都在发生变化。国际利益干扰了当地资源使用者的决策，湿地利用的变化往往与全球进程有关。生态系统崩溃现象和社会冲突日益以湿地为中心。生物物理和社会文化耦合过程的动态被认为决定了农业湿地的恢复力、崩溃或最终重组。跨学科子项目将描述集约化利用下湿地生态系统的变化，并建立土地利用的阈值。与子项目B1、B2和C3密切合作，将描述面对不断变化的生物地球物理条件的各种资源使用者的不同经济和社会战略，并将记录东非大草原最初两个对比鲜明的湿地系统迅速展开的政治生态。

Land and water shortages are currently driving the use of wetland sites in East African savannah environments. Pastoralists, traditional subsistence farmers, and commercial farms increasingly compete for limited land and water resources. Transfers between wetlands and surrounding dryland savannahs are changing both on a material level and the social level. International interests interfere with the decision-making of local resource users and changes in wetland use are frequently linked to global processes. Ecosystem collapse phenomena and social conflicts increasingly centre on wetlands. The dynamics of the coupled biophysical and socio-cultural processes are seen to determine the resilience, collapse or eventually the reorganisation of agriculturally used wetlands. The interdisciplinary sub-project will describe wetland ecosystem changes under intensified use and establish threshold values for land use. In close collaboration with subprojects B1, B2 and C3 the diverse economic and social strategies of various resource users in the face of changing bio-geophysical conditions will be described, and the rapidly unfolding political ecology of initially two contrasting wetland systems in the East African savannah will be documented.