CNH-Ex: Coping with Change: Water Availability and Arid Land Management

由于气候变化或土地和水资源管理做法，可用水量的迅速变化可能给干旱地区的农业系统、生态系统和经济带来极端挑战。在过去的一百年里，由于越来越多的水资源从农村流域被城市利用，美国西部干旱地区现有的水资源短缺、荒漠化和低可持续性的风险变得更加复杂。农业干旱地区的社区面临着气候变化、水资源供应不稳定、城市发展的侵蚀、日益两极分化的农业政治以及商业成本的快速膨胀等问题。气候变化以及水和土地管理政策的变化不仅会导致当地农业和经济的不稳定，而且还会产生有害的环境影响，改变生态系统和进程。面对这些挑战，家庭、社区和政府资源管理机构将不得不做出改变以应对；然而，适应新条件的战略将取决于对气候变化、水资源供应以及这些因素如何影响当地农业资源基础的认识。研究干旱土地及其主要利益相关者群体的可用水量变化的影响尤其具有挑战性，因为气候变化和水政策的影响在各种尺度上都能感受到，包括联邦、州、区域和地方。在每个尺度上，个人对变化的感知不同，并以文化和制度影响形成的独特方式作出反应。本项目将研究不同规模的利益相关者群体如何感知气候和水政策变化，以及这些感知如何影响自然资源和管理决策。研究人员将研究气候、水资源可用性和植被的历史数据，并结合访谈、参与式地理信息系统、记录在案的水资源管理政策和个人对环境变化和响应的历史记录，以评估测量到的和感知到的环境变化之间的关系，并更好地了解人们的感知如何影响应对策略的有效性和长期可持续性。通过将人类和自然系统一起研究，研究人员将能够通过时间和空间尺度检查它们之间复杂的反馈。该项目将对半干旱地区和其他缺水环境的土地管理、水政策和生物多样性保护规划产生重大影响。我们的实证分析将允许其他系统或地区的复制和模型开发，以检查当地实践和政府政策的弹性和可持续性。这项研究的结果将有助于制定可持续的方法，通过帮助土地管理者了解过去和规划未来来应对可变的水资源供应和政策转变。研究结果还将有助于更好地了解塞拉利昂东部地区气候、水资源供应和植被群落之间的动态关系，这将对制定保护和范围管理计划的土地管理人员感兴趣。传统上，水资源政策和保护规划是一项自上而下的工作，忽视了规模、时间和地点的变化。该项目将产生关于环境感知和响应如何随规模和时间变化的新知识，以及如何利用这些知识自适应地管理耦合的自然和人类系统。

Rapid changes in water availability, due to climate change or land and water management practices, can present extreme challenges to arid land agricultural systems, ecosystems, and economies. In the American West the existing risks of water shortage, desertification, and low sustainability in arid lands have been compounded over the last hundred years by the increased removal of water resources from rural watersheds for use in cities. Agricultural arid land communities struggle as they simultaneously face climate change, variable water availability, encroaching urban development, increasingly polarized agricultural politics, and rapid inflation in the costs of business. Climate change and changes in water and land management policy can result not only in destabilization of local agriculture and economies, but can also have detrimental environmental effects, altering ecological systems and processes. In the face of these challenges, households, communities, and governmental resource management agencies will have to make changes in order to cope; however, strategies to adapt to new conditions will depend on perceptions of climate change, water availability, and how these affect the local agricultural resource base. Studying the effects of changes in water availability on arid lands and their key stakeholder groups has been particularly challenging because the impacts of climate change and water policy are felt at a variety of scales, including Federal, State, regional and local. At each scale individuals perceive the changes differently and respond in unique ways shaped by cultural and institutional influences. This project will examine how various stakeholder groups at different scales perceive climate and water policy changes and how these perceptions affect natural resources and management decisions. The investigators will examine historical data on climate, water availability, and vegetation, combining this with interviews, participatory GIS, documented water management policies, and historical personal accounts of environmental change and response in order to assess the relationship between measured and perceived environmental change as well as to understand better how people's perceptions shape the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of coping strategies. By studying the human and natural systems together, the investigators will be able to examine the complex feedbacks between them through time and across spatial scales.This project will have significant implications for land management, water policy, and biodiversity conservation planning in semi-arid lands and other water-limited environments. Our empirical analysis will allow replication and model development for other systems or locations to examine the resilience and sustainability of local practices and government policies. The results of this study will contribute to developing sustainable approaches to coping with variable water availability and policy shifts by helping land managers understand the past and plan for the future. The results will also contribute to better understanding of the dynamic relationship between climate, water availability, and vegetation communities in the Eastern Sierra region, which will be of interest to land managers developing conservation and range management plans. Water policy and conservation planning have traditionally been a top-down exercise, ignoring scale, changes through time and from place to place. This project will generate new knowledge about how environmental perception and response vary with scale and time, and how this knowledge can be used to adaptively manage coupled natural and human systems.