Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems

There are two ongoing projects in CSID looking at the robustness characteristics of coupled social-ecological systems. The first focuses on developing the necessary tools from robust control and applying them to a set of canonical SES's based on themes that emerge from a range of case studies. The second focuses on improving and extending these canonical models to incorporate the subtleties of local context. Short summaries of these projects are provided below.

Integrated Analysis of Robustness in Dynamic Social Ecological Systems
There are many examples of societies that have endured for long periods, successfully coping with uncertainty, disturbance and change in the environment. There are also many examples of societies that have failed in this regard. The core question addressed in this interdisciplinary research project is why some social-ecological systems are more successful in navigating disturbances and change in the environment than others. The investigators hypothesize that an important factor impinging upon this question is a well-known phenomenon in engineering: a system cannot be robust to all classes of disturbances. Thus, in developing mechanisms to address an existing suite of uncertainties and environmental risks (becoming robust to a particular class of disturbances), society necessarily becomes vulnerable to other classes of disturbances. Through the application of several complementary quantitative techniques to a suite of mathematical models based on a large set of case studies, the research team will explore such robustness - fragility trade-offs in a range of simple irrigation societies. The research team will employ methods and insights from applied mathematics, electrical engineering (control), resource economics, archaeology and ecology to develop an integrated approach to study how societies deal with uncertainty, disturbance and change.

Local Context and the Dynamics of Social-Ecological Systems
Evidence continues to mount that resource management policies based on stylized theoretical models frequently fail. One reason for such failures is that models typically neglect subtle contextual variables that condition human behavior and ecological dynamics in real systems. Using data to judiciously add complexity to theoretical models, this project will explore the effects of local cultural, social, economic, and ecological contexts on the performance of institutions and management policies. This will be achieved, in part, through an educational program that will immerse students in research at the boundaries between natural, social, and mathematical sciences.

Dynamics of Rules in Commons Dilemmas

This project combines laboratory experiments, field experiments and agent-based modeling to explore how people develop new institutional arrangements on shared common resources. The laboratory experiments use real-time dynamic spatially explicit shared resources to study how a number of participants develop new institutional arrangements. The participants use text chat and can altruistically punish others. The field experiments are paper and pencil experiments performed in rural villages in Colombia and Thailand. Three types of resource games (forestry, fishery and irrigation) are used. Using both types of experimental data, stylized models are developed to study the emergence of rule structures.

Vulnerability and Transformation of Ancient Societies in the American Southwest

This interdisciplinary collaboration of archaeologists, mathematical modelers, ecologists and environmental scientists will apply archaeological and ecological analyses, resilience theory and formal dynamical modeling to identify the key social and ecological variables, and their interconnections, that foster stability and promote transformation in coupled socio-ecological systems. Three domains are examined: the degree and nature of capitalization; the loci and nature of vulnerabilities; and the severity, scale and nature of transformations. The focus will be long-term human-environmental interactions in archaeologically documented case studies in the American Southwest (Mimbres, Zuni, Hohokam) and Northern Mexico (La Quemada).

Planned New Research Directions

Path Dependence
A proposal is pending on the study of path dependence, which we define as initial conditions that establish a trajectory, making changes or reversal increasingly difficult. Path dependence has been studied primarily in economics, political science, and science and technology studies. This project develops a synthetic and transdisciplinary understanding of the concept, extends it into anthropology/archaeology and uses it to examine the governance of water and land use in both Metropolitan Phoenix and the prehistoric Greater Southwest. Insights and data from these studies are used to develop mathematical models and address questions, including: (1) what factors foster or strengthen path dependence? (2) Does path dependence help us understand urban and environmental issues, and how might such research advance insights into the concept? (3) When is change necessary and how can it be instituted?

Cooperation in Indigenous Health
A proposal is pending on the study of social dilemmas related to health. The benefits of health care are uncertain for an individual who has to make a decision about how much to contribute. Indigenous populations, such as the Ache in Paraguay, are observed to have difficulty organizing themselves to contribute to public health care. Computational models and field experiments will be developed to explore the conditions of cooperation in health care.

The South Phoenix Collaborative: A Study of Cooperation, Culture, & Community
Three proposals are pending to study how cooperative social networks impact the wellbeing of immigrants facing legal, political and economic uncertainty. The broad goals of this project are to (1) leverage transdisciplinary tools to study the dynamics of cooperative immigrant social networks and (2) develop new models for the use of socially engaged research to promote community goals. To increase the social relevance of our research, we use the case of urban South Phoenix, a predominantly migrant local Latino community where inequities have been concentrated over time.

Coupled Land and Water Social-Ecological Systems
Two proposals are pending that will investigate various aspects of coupled land and water social-ecological systems. This work extends prior empirical and theoretical studies on a single resource system. In addition to the relevance of this work for the academic community, understanding the connections between urban growth and water use is an extremely salient issue for the communities in Arizona and throughout much of the world. In upcoming years, we plan to extend our coupled land and water social-ecological systems research to the Bolivian context.

• Institutions, Networks, and Innovations in Coupled Land and Water Policy
  With the first, we seek to understand land and water policy innovation in metropolitan Phoenix. The research includes archival research, institutional analysis, in-depth case studies and social network analysis. We will determine the historical trajectory of land and water policy innovation and investigate organizational networks that encourage or hinder innovation. In the final stages of this project, we will conduct a workshop to present preliminary findings to participating policymakers and planners and to solicit participants feedback. The workshop will also be available on the CSID website, enabling those concerned with this issue, such as environmental organizations, real estate interest groups and local policymakers across the United States, the opportunity to learn more about the research, findings and lessons learned long after the research has been completed.



• Socioecological Gradients and Land-Use Fragmentation: A Cross-Site Comparative Analysis
  In the second study, we seek to understand drivers of growth on the periphery of urban areas in five selected long-term ecological research sites located throughout the western United States. We will focus on how a single but critical ecosystem service-water provisioning-in concert with proximate social causes of peripheral growth-population growth and urbanization rates-is linked to landscape fragmentation.