Hydrological systems in the Anthropocene have shown substantial shifts from their natural processes due to human modifications. Consequently, deploying coupled human-water modeling is a critical tool to analyze observed changes. However, the development of socio-hydrological models often requires extensive qualitative data collection in the field and analysis. Despite the advances in developing inter-disciplinary methodologies in utilizing qualitative data for coupled human-water modeling, there is a need to identify influential parameters in these systems to inform data collection. Here, we present an exploratory socio-hydrological model to systemically investigate the feedback system of public infrastructure providers, resource users, and the dynamics of water scarcity at the catchment scale to inform data collection and analysis in the field. Specifically, we propose a novel socio-hydrological model by employing and integrating a top-down hydrological model and an extension of Aqua.MORE Model (an Agent-Based Model designed to simulate dynamics of water supply and demand). Specifically, we model alternate behavioral theories of human decision-making to represent the agents" behavior. Then, we perform sensitivity analysis techniques to identify key socio-economic and behavioral parameters affecting emergence patterns in a stylized human-dominated catchment. We apply the proposed methodology to the Lake Mendocino Watershed in Northern California, US. The results will potentially point which parameters are influential and how they could be mapped to a particular interview or survey question. This study will help us to identify features of decision-making behavior for inclusion in fieldwork, that be might be overlooked in the absence of the proposed modeling. We anticipate that the proposed approach also contributes to the current Panta Rhei Research Initiative of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) which aims at improving the interpretation of the hydrological processes governing the socio-hydrological systems by focusing on their changing dynamics in connection with rapidly changing human systems.
more »
« less
A spatiotemporal natural-human database to evaluate road development impacts in an Amazon trinational frontier
Road construction and paving bring socio-economic benefits to receiving regions but can also be drivers of deforestation and land cover change. Road infrastructure often increases migration and illegal economic activities, which in turn affect local hydrology, wildlife, vegetation structure and dynamics, and biodiversity. To evaluate the full breadth of impacts from a coupled natural-human systems perspective, information is needed over a sufficient timespan to include pre- and post-road paving conditions. In addition, the spatial scale should be appropriate to link local human activities and biophysical system components, while also allowing for upscaling to the regional scale. A database was developed for the tri-national frontier in the Southwestern Amazon, where the Inter-Oceanic Highway was constructed through an area of high biological value and cultural diversity. Extensive socio-economic surveys and botanical field work are combined with remote sensing and reanalysis data to provide a rich and unique database, suitable for coupled natural-human systems research.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10153825
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Scientific Data
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2052-4463
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Barrier islands and their associated backbarrier environments protect mainland population centers and infrastructure from storm impacts, support biodiversity, and provide long-term carbon storage, among other ecosystem services. Despite their socio-economic and ecological importance, the response of coupled barrier-marsh-lagoon environments to sea-level rise is poorly understood. Undeveloped barrier-marsh-lagoon systems typically respond to sea-level rise through the process of landward migration, driven by storm overwash and landward mainland marsh expansion. Such response, however, can be affected by human development and engineering activities such as lagoon dredging and shoreline stabilization. To better understand the difference in the response between developed and undeveloped barrier-marsh-lagoon environments to sea-level rise, we perform a local morphologic analysis that describes the evolution of Long Beach Island (LBI), New Jersey, over the last 182 years. We find that between 1840 and 1934 the LBI system experienced landward migration of all five boundaries, including 171 meters of shoreline retreat. Between the 1920s and 1950s, however, there was a significant shift in system behavior that coincided with the onset of groin construction, which was enhanced by beach nourishment and lagoon dredging practices. From 1934 to 2022 the LBI system experienced ~22 meters of shoreline progradation and a rapid decline in marsh platform extent. Additionally, we extend a morphodynamic model to describe the evolution of the system in terms of five geomorphic boundaries: the ocean shoreline and backbarrier-marsh interface, the seaward and landward lagoon-marsh boundaries, and the landward limit of the inland marsh. We couple this numerical modeling effort with the map analysis during the undeveloped phase of LBI evolution, between 1840 and 1934. Despite its simplicity, the modeling framework can describe the average cross-shore evolution of the barrier-marsh-lagoon system during this period without accounting for human landscape modifications, supporting the premise that natural processes were the key drivers of morphological change. Overall, these results suggest that anthropogenic effects have played a major role in the evolution of LBI over the past century by altering overwash fluxes and marsh-lagoon geometry; this is likely the case for other barrier-marsh-lagoon environments around the world.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract Background Animal movement is a key ecological process that is tightly coupled to local environmental conditions. While agriculture, urbanisation, and transportation infrastructure are critical to human socio-economic improvement, these have spurred substantial changes in animal movement across the globe with potential impacts on fitness and survival. Notably, however, human disturbance can have differential effects across species, and responses to human activities are thus largely taxa and context specific. As human disturbance is only expected to worsen over the next decade it is critical to better understand how species respond to human disturbance in order to develop effective, case-specific conservation strategies.
Methods Here, we use an extensive telemetry dataset collected over 22 years to fill a critical knowledge gap in the movement ecology of lowland tapirs (
Tapirus terrestris ) across areas of varying human disturbance within three biomes in southern Brazil: the Pantanal, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest.Results From these data we found that the mean home range size across all monitored tapirs was 8.31 km2(95% CI 6.53–10.42), with no evidence that home range sizes differed between sexes nor age groups. Interestingly, although the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Pantanal vary substantially in habitat composition, levels of human disturbance, and tapir population densities, we found that lowland tapir movement behaviour and space use were consistent across all three biomes. Human disturbance also had no detectable effect on lowland tapir movement. Lowland tapirs living in the most altered habitats we monitored exhibited movement behaviour that was comparable to that of tapirs living in a near pristine environment.
Conclusions Contrary to our expectations, although we observed individual variability in lowland tapir space use and movement, human impacts on the landscape also had no measurable effect on their movement. Lowland tapir movement behaviour thus appears to exhibit very little phenotypic plasticity in response to human disturbance. Crucially, the lack of any detectable response to anthropogenic disturbance suggests that human modified habitats risk being ecological traps for tapirs and this information should be factored into conservation actions and species management aimed towards protecting lowland tapir populations.
-
more » « less
Abstract The scientific and policy needs to assess and manage climate change impacts have spawned new coupled, multi-scale integrated assessment model (IAM) frameworks that link global climate and economic processes with high-resolution data and models of human-environmental systems at local and meso scales (Fisher-Vanden and Weyant 2020
Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ. 12 471–87). A central challenge is in accounting for the fundamental interdependence of people, firms, and economic activities across space at multiple scales. This requires modeling approaches that can incorporate the relevant spatial details at each scale while also ensure consistency with spatially varying feedbacks and interactions across scales—a condition economists refer to as spatial equilibrium. In this paper, we provide an overview of how economists think about and model spatial interactions, particularly those at the local level. We describe challenges and recent progress in accounting for greater spatial heterogeneity at individual (field, agent) scales and incorporating heterogeneous spatial interactions and dynamics into consistent IAM frameworks. We conclude that the most notable progress is in advancing global IAMs with spatial heterogeneity and dynamics embedded in spatial equilibrium frameworks and that less progress has been made in incorporating features of spatial equilibrium into highly detailed multi-scale IAMs. -
more » « less
Abstract During the 21st century, human–environment interactions will increasingly expose both systems to risks, but also yield opportunities for improvement as we gain insight into these complex, coupled systems. Human–environment interactions operate over multiple spatial and temporal scales, requiring large data volumes of multi‐resolution information for analysis. Climate change, land‐use change, urbanization, and wildfires, for example, can affect regions differently depending on ecological and socioeconomic structures. The relative scarcity of data on both humans and natural systems at the relevant extent can be prohibitive when pursuing inquiries into these complex relationships. We explore the value of multitemporal, high‐density, and high‐resolution LiDAR, imaging spectroscopy, and digital camera data from the National Ecological Observatory Network’s Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP) for Socio‐Environmental Systems (SES) research. In addition to providing an overview of NEON AOP datasets and outlining specific applications for addressing SES questions, we highlight current challenges and provide recommendations for the SES research community to improve and expand its use of this platform for SES research. The coordinated, nationwide AOP remote sensing data, collected annually over the next 30 yr, offer exciting opportunities for cross‐site analyses and comparison, upscaling metrics derived from LiDAR and hyperspectral datasets across larger spatial extents, and addressing questions across diverse scales. Integrating AOP data with other SES datasets will allow researchers to investigate complex systems and provide urgently needed policy recommendations for socio‐environmental challenges. We urge the SES research community to further explore questions and theories in social and economic disciplines that might leverage NEON AOP data.
