HR: 13:55h
AN: B43H-02 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Decision Making in Rangelands: An Integrated Modeling Approach to Resilience and Change
AU: * Galvin, K A
EM: Kathleen.Galvin@colostate.edu
AF: Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory/Colorado State University, Campus Delivery 1499, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1499, United States
AU: Ojima, D S
EM: Ojima@heinzctr.org
AF: The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, 900 17th Street, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20006, United States
AU: Boone, R B
EM: rboone@nrel.colostate.edu
AF: Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory/Colorado State University, Campus Delivery 1499, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1499, United States
AB: Rangelands comprise approximately 25% of the earth's surface and these landscapes support more than 20 million people and most of the world's charismatic megafauna. Most of the people who live in these regions of the world herd domestic livestock and some do limited cultivation so they are dependent directly on the environment for their livelihoods. But change is rapidly changing the environments upon which these people depend through such factors as population pressures, land use and land tenure changes, climate variability, and policy changes which fragment their resources and thus their ability to earn a living. How can we understand change in this linked human-environment system? The study of complex biophysical and human systems can be greatly assisted by appropriate simulation models that integrate what is known about ecological and human decision-making processes. We have developed an integrated modeling system for Kajiado, Kenya where land use management decisions have implications for economics and the ecosystem. In this paper we look at how land use decisions, that is, livestock movement patterns have implications for societal economics and ecosystem services. Research that focuses on local behavior is important because it is at that level where fundamental decisions are made regarding events like extreme climate and changes such as land tenure policy and it is here where resilience is manifested. The notion that broad recommendation domains can be identified for a broad set of people and large regions coping with change is becoming increasingly hard to trust given the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the systems we are looking at, and the complexity of the world we now live in. Why is this important? The only way the research community is going to make great progress in attaining objectives that do confer resilience (on social and ecological systems) is through much better targeting ability, a large part of which seem to be intimately entwined with understanding how make decisions are made at the local level.
UR: http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/dru/
DE: 0402 Agricultural systems
DE: 0466 Modeling
DE: 1632 Land cover change
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting