CNH: Acequia Water Systems Linking Culture and Nature: Integrated Analysis of Community Resilience to Climate and Land-Use Changes

在世界各地缺水地区的可耕种山谷中，社区水管理系统已经演变为在面临不可靠的降水时维持社区。美国西南部的社区灌溉系统主要基于16世纪定居者引入该地区的古老技术。AQUACIAS由重力供水的土渠组成，它将水流分流到田里。它们处于文化和自然之间一系列复杂的自我维持的互动的中心，这些互动似乎能够使干旱生存并维持其他社会文化和生态系统的好处。ACQUAAS固有的地方水管理团体确保向每个社区公平分配水，在干旱年份为所有用户分配较少的水，在多雨年份为所有用户分配更多的水。Acquias有助于维持社区的认同感和凝聚力、经济可持续性、增强的泛滥平原水文功能和野生动物栖息地。然而，当代以橡树为基础的社区面临着新的社会经济和自然资源压力，威胁着他们的生存。人口增长正在加速从农业用地到住宅用地和用水的转变，而气候变化可能会带来更温暖的冬季，降雨量更少，春季融雪更早。传统的生态系统创造和维持人类与自然系统之间的内在联系，从而提高社区和生态系统对气候和社会经济压力的复原力。更多地了解这些相互联系以及什么可能导致它们改变或失败，对于确定依赖acequas的社区如何适应不断变化的条件至关重要。这一跨学科研究项目将探索橡树群落和相关景观内部和之间的社会经济和文化联系；灌溉河谷和相关流域地表水和地下水之间的水文联系；以及河谷沿岸地区与高地森林和草原之间的野生动物栖息地和放牧分布联系。研究人员将量化水杉在水文功能、群落恢复能力和生态系统健康方面的作用，他们将确定水杉群落生存的潜在临界点。通过对社会经济、文化和生态水文因素的检查，综合工具将表明以水为中心的系统的复原力水平。系统动力学模型将模拟气候和土地利用应激源对经济、社会、文化、气候、水文、植被和野生动物组成部分之间关系的影响。该模型将量化破坏社区和生态系统韧性所需的压力源的大小。测绘将捕捉空间联系，并帮助将研究结果传达给更多的受众。该项目将为传统水管理系统、社区和景观之间的关系提供新的见解。它将通过在西班牙裔农村社区进行研究来扩大少数族裔的参与。社区成员将是该项目的积极参与者，并帮助确定他们自己社区生存的关键。项目成果将通过科学出版物、演示文稿、推广文件和讲习班向研究人员、政策制定者、当地利益攸关方和公众提供。来自该地区的教师将参与参与式培训，以便接触到K-12学生。本科生将直接参与这项研究，研究生将被培训为未来的科学家和社区领袖。一个主要的博物馆展览将把灵性和地方感融入到社区资源管理的展示中。将通过全球比较讲习班和在智利进行的比较研究，与国际专家进行思想交流。这项研究产生的政策指导应有助于维持世界各地的相思群落和类似的共用资源系统。该项目得到了美国自然与人类耦合系统动力学(CNH)计划的支持。

In arable valleys of water-limited regions worldwide, community water management systems have evolved to sustain communities in the face of unreliable precipitation. The acequias of the southwestern United States are community irrigation systems that are based largely on ancient technology introduced to the region by 16th-century settlers. Acequias consist of gravity-fed earthen canals that divert stream flow for distribution to fields. They lie at the center of a set of complex self-maintaining interactions between culture and nature that appear to enable drought survival and maintain other sociocultural and ecosystem benefits. Local water management groups inherent in acequias ensure equitable distribution of water to each community, allocating less water for all users in dry years and more in wet years. Acequias help maintain community identity and cohesion, economic sustainability, enhanced floodplain hydrologic function, and wildlife habitat. Contemporary acequia-based communities face new socioeconomic and natural resource pressures that threaten their existence, however. Population growth is accelerating the change from agricultural to residential land and water uses, while climate change threatens to bring warmer winters with less precipitation and earlier spring snowmelt. Traditional acequias create and sustain intrinsic linkages between human and natural systems that increase community and ecosystem resilience to climatic and socioeconomic stresses. Greater knowledge about these interconnections and what can cause them to change or fail will be essential to determine how the communities relying on acequias can adapt to changing conditions. This interdisciplinary research project will explore socioeconomic and cultural linkages within and between acequia communities and associated landscapes; hydrologic linkages between surface water and groundwater in irrigated river valleys and contributing watersheds; and wildlife habitat and grazing distribution connections between valley riparian areas and upland forests and grasslands. The investigators will quantify the role of acequias in hydrologic function, community resilience, and ecosystem health, and they will identify potential tipping points for acequia community survival. Integrative tools informed by examinations of socioeconomic, cultural, and ecohydrological factors will indicate the resilience level of acequia-centered systems. A system dynamics model will simulate effects of climate and land-use stressors on relationships between economic, social, cultural, climatic, hydrologic, vegetation, and wildlife components. The model will quantify the magnitude of stressors needed to undermine community and ecosystem resilience. Mapping will capture spatial linkages and help communicate the findings to a larger audience.This project will provide new insights into the relationships between traditional water management systems, communities, and landscapes. It will broaden participation of minorities by conducting research in rural Hispanic communities. Community members will be active participants in the project and help determine keys to their own community survival. Project results will be made available to researchers, policy makers, local stakeholders, and the general public through scientific publications, presentations, extension documents, and workshops. Teachers from the region will be involved in participatory training in order to reach K-12 students. Undergraduate students will be directly involved in the research, as will graduate students who will be trained as future scientists and community leaders. A major museum exhibit will integrate spirituality and sense of place into presentation of community resource governance. Cross-pollination of ideas with international experts will take place through a global comparative workshop and a comparative study in Chile. Policy guidance resulting from this study should help maintain acequia communities and similar common-pool resource systems worldwide. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.