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

在全球水资源有限地区的可耕种山谷，社区水管理系统已经发展到能够在不可靠的降水情况下维持社区。美国西南部的水渠是社区灌溉系统，主要基于16世纪移民引入该地区的古老技术。水渠由重力供给的土渠组成，这些土渠将水流分流到田地里。它们位于文化与自然之间一系列复杂的自我维持相互作用的中心，这些相互作用似乎使干旱生存并维持其他社会文化和生态系统的利益。水渠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，在潮湿年份分配更多的水。水渠有助于维持社区身份和凝聚力、经济可持续性、增强洪泛区水文功能和野生动物栖息地。然而，当代以水渠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，而气候变化可能带来暖冬，降水减少，春季融雪提前。传统的水渠创造并维持了人类与自然系统之间的内在联系，增强了社区和生态系统对气候和社会经济压力的适应能力。更多地了解这些相互联系以及导致它们变化或失效的原因，对于确定依赖水渠的社区如何适应不断变化的条件至关重要。这个跨学科的研究项目将探索水系群落和相关景观之间的社会经济和文化联系；灌溉河谷和贡献流域地表水和地下水之间的水文联系；以及野生动物栖息地和放牧分布在山谷河岸地区与高地森林和草原之间的联系。研究人员将量化水塘在水文功能、群落恢复力和生态系统健康方面的作用，并确定水塘群落生存的潜在临界点。综合工具通过对社会经济、文化和生态水文因素的考察，将表明以水渠为中心的系统的恢复能力水平。系统动力学模型将模拟气候和土地利用压力源对经济、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恢复能力所需的压力源的大小。绘制地图将捕捉空间联系，并有助于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。它将通过在农村拉美裔社区开展研究，扩大少数民族的参与。社区成员将积极参与该项目，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、报告、扩展文件和讲习班向研究人员、决策者、当地利益攸关方和公众提供。该地区的教师将参与参与式培训，以便接触到K-12学生。本科生将直接参与研究，研究生将被训练成未来的科学家和社区领袖。一个大型的博物馆展览将把灵性和地方感融入到社区资源治理的呈现中。将通过在智利举行的全球比较讲习班和比较研究，与国际专家进行思想交流。这项研究得出的政策指导应该有助于维持世界范围内的水族群落和类似的公共池资源系统。本项目由美国国家科学基金会自然与人类系统耦合动力学（CNH）项目资助。

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.