Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Acequia Irrigation Communities of New Mexico as Complex Social-Ecological Systems

社会生态系统发生在人类与环境相互作用以维持其福祉的地方。例子包括渔民、森林使用者和灌溉者社区，其中许多社区以相对分散的方式运作了几个世纪。在这些系统中，用户群体可能面临各种各样的干扰或中断，如干旱、国家政策干预或经济发展和城市化。关注这些问题的学者们并没有完全解释，过去这种分散的系统如何成功地应对了古老的干扰，却没有跟上生物物理和政治或经济制度变化所带来的新干扰的发生。这个博士论文研究项目将通过分析新墨西哥州北部被称为“acequias”的一套社区灌溉系统来帮助填补这些空白。它将整合几种科学方法，包括制度、社会网络、历史和计量经济回归分析，以及地理信息系统和遥感技术，以了解陶斯山谷地区的水渠在历史上如何应对洪水和干旱，以及最近对国家干预和经济发展的反应。这项研究将包括通过与山谷中的灌溉者的访谈收集数据、有关历史用水和重要立法的档案数据、国家制作的该地区水文调查和Landsat卫星图像来衡量该系统长期维持农业生产的能力。这些数据将用于创建用于管理水的社会网络数据库，以及重要的体制、人口和生物物理信息数据库。这些数据库将用于帮助理解当系统与社会和生态干扰相互作用时产生的结果。鉴于世界上许多自然资源是由当地用户群体管理的，了解它们如何以及是否能够抵御或容易受到不同类型的干扰是很重要的。这项研究将有助于回答理论问题以及应用政策问题。它将探索用户组如何能够在没有集中控制的情况下自下而上地管理地理上广泛的资源。这将有助于了解社会生态系统的哪些特性增强或阻碍了它们应对洪水和干旱等干扰的能力。此外，它将进一步了解多种形式的政府之间的垂直联系，以及它们对自然资源管理的影响。最后，本文将探讨城市化和经济发展对这些传统社区系统的影响。作为博士论文研究进步奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个独立的研究生涯。

Social-ecological systems occur wherever humans interact with their environment to sustain their well-being. Examples include communities of fishermen, forest users, and irrigators, many of which have functioned for centuries in a relatively decentralized manner. In each of these systems, groups of users may face a variety of disturbances or disruptions, such as droughts, state policy intervention, or economic development and urbanization. Scholars focusing on these issues have not fully explained how such decentralized systems that in the past responded successfully to age-old disturbances, have not kept pace with the occurrence of novel disturbances brought on by changing biophysical and political or economic regimes. This doctoral dissertation research project will help to fill these gaps by analyzing a set of community-based irrigation systems in northern New Mexico known as "acequias". It will integrate several scientific approaches, including institutional, social network, historical, and econometric regression analyses, as well as geographic information systems and remote sensing technologies, in order to understand how the acequias in an area known as the Taos valley have historically responded to floods and droughts, and more recently to state intervention and economic development. The research will involve collecting data through interviews with irrigators in the valley, archival data regarding historic water use and important legislation, state-produced hydrographic surveys of the area, and Landsat satellite imagery to measure the systems' abilities to maintain agricultural production over time. These data will be used in the creation of databases of the social network used to manage water, and of important institutional, demographic, and biophysical information. These databases will be used to help understand the outcomes produced when the systems interact with social and ecological disturbances.Given that many of the world's natural resources are managed by local user groups, it is important to understand how and whether they are resilient or vulnerable to different types of disturbances. This research will help to answer theoretical questions as well as applied policy questions. It will explore how user groups are able to manage geographically extensive resources from the bottom up, without centralized control. It will help understand what properties of social-ecological systems increase, or hamper, their ability to respond to disturbances such as floods and droughts. Additionally, it will further understanding of vertical linkages between multiple forms of government, and the effects these have on natural resource management. Finally, it will explore the effects that urbanization and economic development have had on these traditional community-based systems. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.