Vulnerability, resilience, and transformability in social-ecological systems: watershed provision capacity, resource use and disturbance

Abstract

Managed ecosystems manifest vulnerability according to decline of ecological resilience and depletion or loss of major ecosystem service flows. Driving forces acting on vulnerability often require management actions of the regional and / or local landscape, in conjunction with other external factors. To operationalize these concepts in landscape management, this research proposal involves the interaction between the provision of ecosystem services, their use by society, and anthropogenic changes that occur over time (10 years). The dataset to be obtained is related to three methodological steps: 1. Dynamics of exploration intensity and change in land use between 2004 and 2014 in two river basins; 2. Quantification of vulnerability and resilience of environmental systems through structural indicators of the landscape; 3. Identification of the ecological capacity to provide ecosystem services to human. The relationship between these processes will be analyzed based on methods that approach the watershed with satellite images. The results should identify focal areas of socio-ecological coupling, based on the overlap of the driving force and other converging factors of change (indicators), indicate the vulnerability of the condition resulting from the degradation of ecosystem services. This approach allow the integration of spatial data in support of decision for adaptive management of managed ecological systems, and to prioritize the necessary efforts to reduce the vulnerability of the same condition. (AU)