Analysing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems (ReSES) – a simple model of water management in a semi-arid river del

1. UFZ - Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig/Halle Maja Schlüter1 & Claudia Pahl-Wostl2 1Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig/Halle, Leipzig, Germany, maja.schlueter@ufz.de 2Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of Osnabrück, Germany INTRODUCTION Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks [1]. Resilience is seen as an important system property that determines a system’s capacity to cope with and benefit from change [2]. Understanding of mechanisms and dynamics of resilience in a resource management context can support an adaptive management process. We aim to use a simple model of a coupled social-ecological system in the Amudarya river basin (Central Asia) to explore the influence of organisational structure, information availability, and learning on system resilience and its capacity to cope with uncertainty and to adapt to changing conditions. MECHANISMS OF RESILIENCE Analysing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems (ReSES) – a simple model of water management in a semi-arid river delta WATER MANAGEMENT IN THE AMUDARYA RIVER DELTA • HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS • Coupling between social and bio-physical models is facilitated by the link of both systems through the water resource and harvesting of the products crop and fish. Feedbacks between the human and natural systems are explicitly taken into account (Fig.2). • Irrigated agriculture and lake ecosystems are dependent on water supply by the river. • Water supply to the delta area is highly variable and uncertain. • Water allocation to users is managed at different levels (national, regional, local). • River flow supports crop production and sustains fish populations in the lakes. • Humans exploit both agricultural resources and fish. • Decision making and information flows are represented at different levels (Fig. 3). • Hybrid model combining differential equa- tions for fish population, water flows network with agent based model composed of simple rules. ReSES - MODEL STRUCTURE RESES - AGENTS Fig 1: Simplified scheme of water management in Amudarya delta Fig 2: Scheme of components of ReSES and their interactions; 1Environmental Policies and Insitutions for Central Asia (EPIC) Modelling System for water-balance optimization models in GAMS • SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS • Implementation of different allocation regimes (from administrative to user-based) characterized by degree of distribution of decision making, transfer of information, intensity of agent interactions, potential of agents and social networks to exchange and store knowledge. • Analysis of resilience (global and local achievement of production goals, survival of fish population) of the regimes to different levels of variability and uncertainty in water availability • Study of evolution of decentralized regime and multi-user (irrigation and fish) water allocation Fig 3: Class diagram of agent model (WA= Water availability) DISCUSSION EXPECTED RESULTS Bottom-up (distributed) management is more flexible and can better cope with uncertainty than top-down (centra-lized) management. However, some administrative control is necessary. Buffer capacity of reservoir and fish population is important for resilience of the system. Access to and transfer of information and learning processes among agents are major factors influencing the capacity of the system to adapt to changes. Resilience of Social-Ecological System can only be understood by analyzing the coupled system. • Development of simplified model of real world case study example as tool to analyse mechanisms of resilience for management of resources. • Challenges lie in determining the appropriate level of complexity in representation of decision making by agents, ecosystem and resource dynamics - and in analysing the influence of model uncertainties on the robustness of the conclusions derived from model results. • Analysis of resilience has to be context-based. Is generalization on the role of system structure for its resilience possible? References: [1] Walker B, Holling CS, Carpenter SR, Kinzig A (2004). Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-Ecological Systems. Ecology and Society 9(2):5. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5 [2] Folke C, Carpenter S, Elmqvist T, Gunderson L, Holling CS, Walker B (2002). Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations. Ambio 31(5): 437-440