There are substantial resilience studies centered on the ability of social-ecological systems to absorb impacts while maintaining function and structure. Another aspect of resilience is a system’s capacity for renewal or reorganization after the shock, which is less discussed but critical for management purposes. Although disturbances, such as natural hazards, often wreak havoc on human and natural systems, in the aftermath, there is the potential opportunity for transformation. In this study, we ask how the natural hazard altered the status of social-ecological systems in Louisiana. With temporal and spatial dimensions, we compare the social and environmental conditions in Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina, and examine: 1) how human and natural systems in Louisiana responded to Hurricane Katrina; and 2) how the natural hazard altered the status of the social, economic, and environmental conditions over time. Through the investigation of change in the spatial patterns of key variables characterizing social (i.e., population, race and ethnicity), economic (i.e., household income, unemployment rate) and environmental (i.e., vegetation, wetland, bird diversity) change, we aim to provide in-depth discussion on the uneven distribution of the demographic/social, economic and environmental alteration within the area. Our data sources are from NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program, US Census Bureau, and North American Breeding Bird Survey. All data are analyzed using the geostatistical tool and visualized in ArcGIS.
Results/Conclusions
Our preliminary findings show that different scales and locations experienced distinct impacts. In New Orleans, the largest percentage of land change resulted from wetland loss, damaged areas, and development. Meanwhile, in southern Louisiana, the greatest changes were wetland, forest and scrub losses. Although the Shannon index of bird diversity near the most impacted areas did not severely decline, biodiversity has been decreasing since 2000. Several years after the destructive impacts of Hurricane Katrina, the population of New Orleans started to increase for the first time since 1950 and consequently the city experienced renewed economic growth. However, not all population groups and local communities were equally impacted by natural hazards or benefit from reorganization. A cluster analysis of social variables also reveals spatial pattern change at different scales. Our results suggest that cross-scale considerations are critical in managing the resilience of social-ecological systems, particularly when encountering natural hazards.