Adaptive capacity of producers in a grassland social-ecological system: A social network approach

Background/Question/Methods

Vegetation transitions, whereby an ecosystem switches from one dominant vegetation state to another, threaten grasslands and savannahs across the globe. In the American west, vegetation transitions can occur when landscapes shift from vegetated to bare ground (i.e., erosion and desertification), from grasslands to woody plants (i.e., woody encroachment), and from herbaceous perennials/shrubs/trees to annual grasses (i.e., exotic annual grass invasion). The scale, pace, and nature of each of these regime shifts is context specific, with interactions between different components of the system (e.g., biophysical and human components) occurring at different geographic and time scales. In Nebraska, the eastern front of the prairie grassland ecosystem is experiencing a regime shift dominated by eastern redcedar. These trees use a considerable amount of water and pose challenges for agriculture in an area already limited by water scarcity. Yet some areas along the frontier of this invasion appear to resilient to the change. While this issue has been examined from an ecological perspective, we seek to understand what confers social resilience through a study of agricultural producers’ social networks. We administered an ego-network survey to agricultural producers in Nebraska to understand how the size, composition, and structure of individuals’ social networks influences their adaptive capacity to respond to change in grassland ecosystems.

Results/Conclusions

Preliminary results suggest that producers who have larger, more diverse networks characterized by an open structure have access to more information, resources, and social support (indications of higher adaptive capacity). This research represents a novel attempt to understand social network structure and adaptive capacity of people living in rangelands facing wholesale ecological changes to vegetation. These findings may be critically important to understand how to prevent transitions in these and potentially other systems and may be useful for managers trying to encourage certain adaptive behavior in producers.