Adaptive Comanagement for Building Resilience in Social–Ecological Systems

Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems that require flexible governance with the ability to respond to environmental feedback. We present, through examples from Sweden and Canada, the development of adaptive comanagement systems, showing how local groups self-organize, learn, and actively adapt to and shape change with social networks that connect institutions and organizations across levels and scales and that facilitate information flows. The development took place through a sequence of responses to environmental events that widened the scope of local management from a particular issue or resource to a broad set of issues related to ecosystem processes across scales and from individual actors, to group of actors to multiple-actor processes. The results suggest that the institutional and organizational landscapes should be approached as carefully as the ecological in order to clarify features that contribute to the resilience of social–ecological systems. These include the following: vision, leadership, and trust; enabling legislation that creates social space for ecosystem management; funds for responding to environmental change and for remedial action; capacity for monitoring and responding to environmental feedback; information flow through social networks; the combination of various sources of information and knowledge; and sense-making and arenas of collaborative learning for ecosystem management. We propose that the self-organizing process of adaptive comanagement development, facilitated by rules and incentives of higher levels, has the potential to expand desirable stability domains of a region and make social–ecological systems more robust to change.Published online     

Does Wetland Location Matter When Managing Wetlands for Watershed‐Scale Flood and Drought Resilience?

Wetland protection and restoration strategies that are designed to promote hydrologic resilience do not incorporate the location of wetlands relative to the main stream network. This is primarily attributed to the lack of knowledge on the effects of wetland location on wetland hydrologic function (e.g., flood and drought mitigation). Here, we combined a watershed‐scale, surface–subsurface, fully distributed, physically based hydrologic model with historical, existing, and lost (drained) wetland maps in the Nose Creek watershed in the Prairie Pothole Region of North America to (1) estimate the hydrologic functions of lost wetlands and (2) estimate the hydrologic functions of wetlands located at different distances from the main stream network. Modeling results showed wetland loss altered streamflow, decreasing baseflow and increasing stream peakflow during the period of the precipitation events that led to major flooding in the watershed and downstream cities. In addition, we found that wetlands closer to the main stream network played a disproportionately important role in attenuating peakflow, while wetland location was not important for regulating baseflow. The findings of this study provide information for watershed managers that can help to prioritize wetland restoration efforts for flood or drought risk mitigation.     

Changes in Genetic Structure of Posidonia oceanica at Monterosso al Mare (Ligurian Sea) and Its Resilience Over a Decade (1998–2009)

Genetic differences in the Posidonia oceanica meadow of Monterosso al Mare (NW Mediterranean, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) "Cinque Terre") were compared in three stations, at an increasing distance from a source of impact (beach nourishment) in the recent decade. Random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis showed a higher genetic variability (>20?%) in the area directly subjected to the stress, increasing with time. Clone integration, confirmed by phenotypic analysis, showed increases both in shoot density and leaf length connected to genetic differences observed in DNA fingerprints of new shoots. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed 45?% individual differences within populations and 54?% among the populations. The fixation index (F (ST)?=?0.54), of the genetic differentiation, showed a marked difference between the populations at different temporal scales. Over a decade AMOVA indicated genetic variations from 28?% (1998) to 54?% (2009). These results make it clear that in the P. oceanica population examined the environment had, in ten years, selected those clones which were more resistant to the anthropogenic impact, despite being subjected to the effects of the resuspension of fine sediments. These findings could help to explain both the survival of the regressed Mediterranean P. oceanica meadows in areas subjected to moderate impacts and the extreme variability in success of revegetation experiments. Management of the ecological disturbance here described indicates also the timescale in population response to stress and its increased resilience in MPAs.