Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Acequia Irrigation Communities of New Mexico as Complex Social-Ecological Systems

博士论文研究：将新墨西哥州的 Acequia 灌溉社区理解为复杂的社会生态系统

• 批准号: 0926282
• 负责人: Elinor Ostrom
• 金额: $ 1.12万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-15 至 2011-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0926282&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Understanding; Acequia

Social-ecological systems occur wherever humans interact with their environment to sustain their well-being. Examples include communities of fishermen, forest users, and irrigators, many of which have functioned for centuries in a relatively decentralized manner. In each of these systems, groups of users may face a variety of disturbances or disruptions, such as droughts, state policy intervention, or economic development and urbanization. Scholars focusing on these issues have not fully explained how such decentralized systems that in the past responded successfully to age-old disturbances, have not kept pace with the occurrence of novel disturbances brought on by changing biophysical and political or economic regimes. This doctoral dissertation research project will help to fill these gaps by analyzing a set of community-based irrigation systems in northern New Mexico known as "acequias". It will integrate several scientific approaches, including institutional, social network, historical, and econometric regression analyses, as well as geographic information systems and remote sensing technologies, in order to understand how the acequias in an area known as the Taos valley have historically responded to floods and droughts, and more recently to state intervention and economic development. The research will involve collecting data through interviews with irrigators in the valley, archival data regarding historic water use and important legislation, state-produced hydrographic surveys of the area, and Landsat satellite imagery to measure the systems' abilities to maintain agricultural production over time. These data will be used in the creation of databases of the social network used to manage water, and of important institutional, demographic, and biophysical information. These databases will be used to help understand the outcomes produced when the systems interact with social and ecological disturbances.Given that many of the world's natural resources are managed by local user groups, it is important to understand how and whether they are resilient or vulnerable to different types of disturbances. This research will help to answer theoretical questions as well as applied policy questions. It will explore how user groups are able to manage geographically extensive resources from the bottom up, without centralized control. It will help understand what properties of social-ecological systems increase, or hamper, their ability to respond to disturbances such as floods and droughts. Additionally, it will further understanding of vertical linkages between multiple forms of government, and the effects these have on natural resource management. Finally, it will explore the effects that urbanization and economic development have had on these traditional community-based systems. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.

只要人类与环境相互作用以维持其福祉，社会生态系统就会出现。例子包括渔民、森林使用者和灌溉者社区，其中许多社区以相对分散的方式运作了几个世纪。在每个系统中，用户群体可能面临各种干扰或破坏，例如干旱、国家政策干预或经济发展和城市化。关注这些问题的学者们还没有完全解释为什么这种去中心化系统在过去成功地应对了古老的干扰，但却跟不上生物物理和政治或经济体制变化所带来的新干扰的发生。该博士论文研究项目将通过分析新墨西哥州北部一套名为“acequias”的社区灌溉系统来帮助填补这些空白。 它将整合多种科学方法，包括制度、社会网络、历史和计量经济回归分析，以及地理信息系统和遥感技术，以了解陶斯山谷地区的水牛历史上如何应对洪水和干旱，以及最近的国家干预和经济发展。该研究将包括通过采访山谷中的灌溉者、有关历史用水和重要立法的档案数据、国家对该地区进行的水文调查以及陆地卫星图像来收集数据，以衡量系统长期维持农业生产的能力。这些数据将用于创建用于管理水的社交网络数据库以及重要的机构、人口和生物物理信息。这些数据库将用于帮助了解系统与社会和生态干扰相互作用时产生的结果。鉴于世界上许多自然资源都是由当地用户群体管理的，了解它们如何以及是否具有弹性或脆弱性非常重要不同类型的干扰。这项研究将有助于回答理论问题和应用政策问题。它将探讨用户组如何能够在没有集中控制的情况下自下而上管理地理上广泛的资源。它将有助于了解社会生态系统的哪些特性会增强或阻碍其应对洪水和干旱等干扰的能力。此外，它将进一步了解多种形式的政府之间的纵向联系及其对自然资源管理的影响。最后，它将探讨城市化和经济发展对这些传统的社区系统的影响。作为博士论文研究进步奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。