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A resilience framework for chronic exposures: water quality and ecosystem services in coastal social-ecological systems.
Citation:
Merrill, N., K. Mulvaney, D. Martin, Marty Chintala, W. Berry, T. Gleason, S. Balogh, AND A. Humphries. A resilience framework for chronic exposures: water quality and ecosystem services in coastal social-ecological systems. Coastal Management. Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA, 46(4):242-258, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2018.1474066
Impact/Purpose:
Water quality issues in coastal zones are complex interactions between humans and the natural environment. Research to address these issues is equally complex, requiring inputs from a cadre of social and environmental scientists. Unlike acute coastal disturbances such as hurricanes or oil spills, water quality issues, particularly those related to nutrients, exist as more constant, slow moving and frustratingly chronic problems. We present a framework to guide targeted scientific research and to provide a lens through which to conduct research to inform long-term community planning decisions pertaining to chronic issues in coastal systems.
Description:
Water quality degradation is a chronic problem which influences the resilience of a social-ecological system differently than acute disturbances, such as disease or storms. Recognizing this, we developed a tailored resilience framework that applies ecosystem service concepts to coastal social-ecological systems affected by degraded water quality. We present the framework as a mechanism for coordinating interdisciplinary research to inform long-term community planning decisions pertaining to chronic challenges in coastal systems. The resulting framework connects the ecological system to the social system via ecological production functions and ecosystem services. The social system then feeds back to the ecological system via policies and interventions to address declining water quality. We apply our resilience framework to the coastal waters and communities of Cape Cod (Barnstable County, Massachusetts, USA) which are affected by nitrogen over-enrichment. This approach allowed us to design research to improve the understanding of the effectiveness and acceptance of water quality improvement efforts and their effect on the delivery of ecosystem services. This framework is intended to be transferable to other geographical settings and more generally applied to systems exposed to chronic disturbances in order to coordinate interdisciplinary research planning and inform coastal management.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: A resilience framework for chronic exposures: water quality and ecosystem services in coastal social-ecological systems.