Working with Carolin Antoni, a visiting scholar from the Universidad de San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and her doctoral advisors, we have created a resilience assessment of a social-ecological system in an ejido in Laguna de Mante, Mexico.
Figure 1: Jaguar on patrol in Laguna de Mante (from Huaxtecaonline)
The objective of this study was to identify key (external and internal) drivers of change in this SES and their role in the historical development of a tropical landscape in Northern Mexico, now dedicated to industrial sugarcane production. We used the adaptive cycle metaphor to identify and explain the phases and transitions that the region of Laguna de Mante went through since the 1940s.
Figure 2: The Adaptive Cycle (from the Resilience Alliance)
In particular, we wanted to understand how the system changed over time and what the key drivers of change were. We were interested at social, economic, and ecological outcomes and whether the current state of the system was stable and resilient to the current context and whether it was likely to remain so to future drivers such as climate change or trade regime modifications.
Stay tuned as this works its way through the publishing gauntlet.
michaelschoon 