Adaptive Cycle

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Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural
Landscapes
Craig R. Allen Nebraska Cooperative Fish and
Wildlife Research Unit
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Overview

• Resilience
• Climate change non-linear surprises following
  changes in slow variables
• UNL and the Resilience Alliance
• UNL Resilience Research / Adaptive Management
  Approaches
• Resilience in Working Agricultural Landscapes
• An adaptive management approach for selecting
  habitat improvement targets in the shortgrass
  prairie
• Adaptive harvest management for greater
  prairie-chicken harvest in Southeast Nebraska

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A public Domain, once a velvet carpet of rich
Buffalo-grass and grama, now an illimitable waste
of rattlesnake-bush and tumbleweed, too
impoverished to be accepted as a gift by the
states within which It lies. Why? Because the
ecology of the Southwest happened to be set on a
hair trigger. Aldo Leopold, The Conservation
Ethic, 1935
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Freshwater Lakes
Clear
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Freshwater Lakes
Algae
Clear
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Rangelands in Australia
Grass
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Rangelands in Australia
Grass
Shrubs
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Sandhills in Nebraska
Grass
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Sandhills in Nebraska
Grass
Dunes or Brush
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Observed Ecosystem Shifts
FROM Clear water lake Benthic
Vegetation Grassland Forest Pest outbreak Hard
Coral
TO Turbid water lake Algae Shrubland No
outbreak Algae
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Resilience

• A measure of the amount of disturbance needed
  to flip an ecosystem from one stable state to a
  different stable state
• Both undesirable and desirable system states can
  be highly resilient, i.e., hard to shift to
  another state

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Threshold Response
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Threshold Response
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The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org

• Multidisciplinary network focused on
• Understanding of complex environmental systems
• Combining social, economic, and ecological
  factors
• Extensive involvement in Adaptive Management
• Regional case studies linked with theory
  development

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The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org

• Multidisciplinary network focused on
• Understanding of complex environmental systems
• Combining social, economic, and ecological
  factors
• Extensive involvement in Adaptive Management
• Regional case studies linked with theory
  development
• Paradigm shift from top-down (command-and-control)
  optimization to resilience and self-organization
  
• Explores complex dynamics in social-ecological
  systems
• Research focus on managing for resilience,
  adaptability, and transformability in systems of
  people and nature

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Resilience Video
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The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
Arizona State University Center for Environmental
Studies Beijer International Institute for
Ecological EconomicsCentre de Coopération
Internationale en Recherche Agronomique Indiana
University, Center for the Study of
InstitutionsStockholm University, Center for
Transdisciplinary Research James Cook
University, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral
ReefsThe Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research CSIRO Sustainable EcosystemsEmory
UniversityMcGill School of the EnvironmentSouth
Africa nodeStockholm Environmental Institute
Dutch NodeUniversity of Wisconsin University of
Nebraska-Lincoln
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The Resilience Alliance www.resalliance.org
Arizona State University Center for Environmental
Studies Beijer International Institute for
Ecological EconomicsCentre de Coopération
Internationale en Recherche Agronomique Indiana
University, Center for the Study of
InstitutionsStockholm University, Center for
Transdisciplinary Research James Cook
University, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral
ReefsThe Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research CSIRO Sustainable EcosystemsEmory
UniversityMcGill School of the EnvironmentSouth
Africa nodeStockholm Environmental Institute
Dutch NodeUniversity of Wisconsin University of
Nebraska-Lincoln
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Resilience Questions

• How does resilience manifest itself in different
  systems?
• What are the properties of systems that make them
  more or less resilient?
• How do we measure resilience?
• How do we recover resilience and adaptability in
  systems where they are being eroded, and enhance
  them in systems undergoing change?

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Resilience and Climate Change - Whats the
Connection?

• How does resilience manifest itself in different
  systems?
• Some systems will be more or less affected by
  climate change.
• What are the properties of systems that make them
  more or less resilient?
• How do we recognize which systems are vulnerable
  and which arent vulnerable, and how do we
  decrease the vulnerability of systems to the
  threat of climate change?
• How do we lessen the chance of unpleasant
  ecological or economic surprise driven by climate
  change?

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What Insights Might Resilience Thinking Bring to
the Understanding and Anticipation of Climate
Change?
Hysterisis When the Path Out is not the same as
the Path In
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Thresholds
Linear changes (inputs) can have non-linear
responses
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Surprise
Unanticipated reactions to efforts to control
variation
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UNL Resilience Projects

• Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural
  Landscapes
• NSF Proposed Resilience of Water Resources
• USDA NRI Resilience in Working Landscapes
• Sandhills Biocomplexity

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Understanding Resilience in Working Agricultural
Landscapes

• The contribution of high diversity patches in an
  agricultural landscape
• How does diversity relate to
• Pollination
• Herbivory
• Soil development
• Invasion resistance
• And are some of these ecosystem services exported
  to adjacent row crop agriculture?
• If so, how does this contribute to the resilience
  of the landscape?

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Invasion Resistance
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Herbivory
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Adaptive Resource Management (and Adaptive
Governance)

• A method to experimentally probe systems to
  determine key uncertainties, with experiments
  where it is ok to fail
• An approach that views policy as hypotheses
  that is, most policies are really questions
  masquerading as answers. Because policies are
  questions, then management actions become
  treatments, in an experimental sense."
• UNL projects
• Adaptive harvest management for greater
  prairie-chicken harvest in Southeast Nebraska
• An adaptive management approach for selecting
  habitat improvement targets in the shortgrass
  prairie ecosystem
• Establishing MS and PhD options in ARM

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Adaptive Harvest Management for Greater
Prairie-Chicken Harvest in Southeast Nebraska

• Adaptive Resource Management
• Using harvests and surveys to gain information
  about harvest mortality

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Adaptive Harvest Management Process

• Determine objectives
• Define regulatory options
• Define set of models to represent uncertainties
• Design annual monitoring program
• Define way to measure model credibility

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Comparing Model Predictions to Survey Data
Reducing model uncertainty
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Resilience and Climate Change Questions

• How will the intensification of agriculture
  driven by increased demand for ethanol affect the
  resilience of agricultural landscapes to change
  driven by climate warming?
• How will climate change affect water availability
  in the Great Plains, and how will this affect the
  resilience of this system?
• How will climate change affect the distribution
  and diversity of animals and plants, and how will
  this influence the resilience of Great Plains
  ecosystems. http//calmit.unl.edu/invasives/
• What surprises might we anticipate? How might we
  mitigate potential negative changes. What
  scenarios should we envision?
• Thank you!