RAPID: Perception of and Adaptation to Extreme Flooding Disturbances in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

一般假设，人们的环境感知是他们如何组织资源评估、提取模式和获取规则的重要组成部分。感知的一个基本组成部分是不确定性，它通常与在当地系统中的停留时间成反比。这一理论的基础是这样一种假设，即较长的停留时间足以使人们观察到可能的环境通量范围的很大一部分，从而知道如何把握或感知环境变化并作出相应的反应。此外，在给定的环境系统中，更大的环境可变性将增加不确定性，特别是当这种可变性是可预测的时候。也就是说，有规律的变化，如海潮，可能表现出很大的变化，但这种变化是非常可预测的。更困难的情况是，变异性表现出非线性行为或似乎有频繁的随机事件。因此，对于那些生活在边缘地带的人来说，危险带来了双重困难：它们不仅构成了环境/生物物理危险，而且当这些事件超出了一个人的个人或共同经历时，也带来了认知挑战。来自德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的Kelley Crews和宾夕法尼亚州立大学的Brian King博士将评估在博茨瓦纳奥卡万戈三角洲及其周边地区即将发生的极端洪水灾害的事前态度、看法和判断。这项研究的关键在于收集人们在洪水到来之前对即将到来的洪水的看法，这样可以在事件发生后进行重复访谈，以了解人们先前的看法与事件发生后的情况之间的关系：他们是否适应了部分或全部的生计策略，他们是否向外迁移，或者他们是否依靠政府福利？虽然事后访谈在被试回忆实际信息方面被证明是成功的，比如“在你离开之前，你村子里的水有多远？”他们在触发被试对其事前态度和感受的准确回忆方面是出了名的差。因此，如果不事先与人们交谈，就无法评估人们对此类危险或系统动态的看法的任何变化。因此，在事件发生前收集这些信息对于任何进一步的研究都是绝对必要的，并且可以通过立即开始数据收集来利用长期研究。关于灾害、感知和对极端扰动的反应之间相互作用的研究结果将对当地决策者和利益相关者以及更大的灾害和生计研究社区具有直接价值。虽然这项研究主要以实地为基础，但它提供了在美国和博茨瓦纳增加教育机会的机会。这项研究将吸引来自不同背景和国家的跨学科学生，以及来自博茨瓦纳当地大学项目的学生。这项研究的结果将提供给有兴趣参与该项目的博茨瓦纳大学学生。这些教育机会对妇女和非巴茨瓦纳人尤其重要，因为她们历来没有被允许以与其他巴茨瓦纳人相同的比例进入教育机构。该项目还将继续与当地合作者进行实质性互动，博茨瓦纳作为《拉姆萨尔湿地公约》缔约国的地位提供了一种既定的手段，可以将方法和管理结果传递给所有其他签署国，使这项研究对易受灾害事件影响的湿地生态系统的可持续利用产生更大的国际社会影响。

It is generally hypothesized that people's environmental perceptions are an important part of how they organize their resource evaluations, extraction patterns, and rules of access. A fundamental component of perception is uncertainty, often inversely related to residence time in a local system. Underlying this theory is the presumption that longer residence time would be sufficient for people to have observed a large portion of the range of possible environmental fluxes, and thus know how to bracket or perceive environmental change and react accordingly. Further, greater environmental variability in a given environmental system will increase uncertainty, particularly when that variability is predictable. That is, regular variability such as ocean tides may exhibit a large change, but it is a very predictable change. A more difficult scenario is where the variability exhibits non-linear behavior or appears to have frequent stochastic events. Thus hazards present a doubly difficult situation for those living on the margins: they pose both an environmental / biophysical danger but also present a cognitive challenge when those events reach outside a person's individual or shared experience.Dr. Kelley Crews from the University of Texas Austin, along with Dr. Brian King at the Pennsylvania State University will assess pre-event attitudes, perceptions, and judgments of an impending extreme flooding hazard in and around the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The crux of this research relies upon collecting people's perceptions of the impending flood prior to the flood's arrival, such that repeat interviews can be conducted post-event to see how people's prior perceptions relate to their post-event situation: did they adapt some or all livelihood strategies, did they out-migrate, or did they go on government benefits? While post-event interviews have been shown to be successful in subject recall of actual information such as "how far did the water reach in your village before you left?," they are notoriously poor at triggering accurate subject recall of their pre-event attitudes and feelings. Thus, without speaking to people pre-event, there is no way to assess any change in people's perceptions in response to such hazards or system dynamics. Gathering this information pre-event is therefore absolutely required for any further study, and will be able to be leveraged with longer-term studies by starting the data collection immediately. The findings regarding the interplay of hazards, perception, and response to extreme disturbance will be of immediate value to local decision-makers and stakeholders as well as the larger hazards and livelihoods research communities.While this study is primarily field-based, it presents an opportunity to grow education opportunities in the United States and in Botswana. This study will engage interdisciplinary students from multiple backgrounds and countries, as well as students from local college programs in Botswana. Results of this study will be made available to University of Botswana students interested in participating in the project. These educational opportunities are particularly important for females and non-BaTswana who have historically not been allowed access to educational institutions in the same proportion as other BaTswana. This project will also continue substantive interaction with local collaborators, and the status of Botswana as a contracting party to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands provides an established means of transmitting the methodological and management findings to all other signatory countries for greater international societal impact of this research on the sustainable use of wetland ecosystems prone to hazard events.